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ay 



The Fortune of the Republic 



WORKS OF 

NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

STUDIES, NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC ON AMERICA OF TO- 
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The Fortune of the 
Republic 

And Other Addresses 

Upon the America of 
To- Day and To-Morrow 

By 

Newell Dwight Hillis 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 



London 



AND 



Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1906, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 






LIBRARY «f CONGRESS 

Two Copies Received 

NOV 14 1906 

Copyright Entry 

cuss a. xxc, No. 

COPY B. 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue 
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 



Contents 



I. The Forces Making for Na- 
tional Unity ... 9 

n. The Passing of Sectionalism 

in the New South and North 42 

III The Institutions of the Ee- 
puBLio AND Their Fitness 
FOR New Peoples ... 67 

IV. The Schools of Our Eepublio 

AND the Education of Our 
EULERS 101 

V. Individual Excellence, the 

Secret of National Prog- 
ress 120 

VI. The Crime of Stirring up 

Class- Hatred . . . 151 

VII. National Decay and Growth 177 

VIII. Christian Unity and Church 

Consolidation in the Eepub- 
lio 195 

IX. The True Solution of Social 

Problems .... 216 



Contents 

X. The Message OF Puritanism . 241 

XI. The Universal Note of Chris- 

tianity 263 

XII. The New Ideal Commonwealth 282 

XIII. ^'One Man Soweth, and An- 

other Eeapeth " . . . 299 

Index 323 



FOREWORD 



Several years ago I wrote the outline of 
this book and promised to publish it the fol- 
lowing autumn. Before going to press I de- 
cided to spend the summer in the interest of 
some first hand information as to the problems 
and people of the republic. Having lectured 
some thirty times in various cities on the 
Pacific Slope, I discovered that events had 
changed so rapidly that I must restate my po- 
sition. I therefore decided to see as much as I 
could within three years of every great indus- 
try in every state and territory of the Union. 
Including summer lectures before the Chau- 
tauquas and summer schools, and winter ad- 
dresses before the lyceums, I have lectured 
some three hundred times in as many cities, 
and gone through the shop, the factory, the 
public institution, the mine or special industry 
that was the pride of the community. 

In the hope of finding out what the men who 
are doing things, think about their country and 
its institutions, I have talked with thousands 
of men of all classes, and accumulated note- 
books that would make half a dozen volumes 



Foreword 

like this book. The result of this attempt to 
secure first hand information is, that I am an 
out and out optimist. If one can trust one's 
own eyes and ears, there is not the shadow of 
a shade of a reason for pessimism as to the 
people and institutions of this country. 

Once a few people bought books, now all the 
people read books and magazines. Once a few 
towns had lecture courses, now at the very time 
when some people think the lyceum is dead, 
the lecture courses are so popular that if a 
man could lecture three times a day every 
day in the year, it would take him five years to 
make the round of lecture courses in this coun- 
try. As for education, and interest in general 
culture, once Athens gave three days each year 
to the dramatist, the poet and the orator; this 
summer witnessed in the Middle West the 
setting up of a hundred and forty temporary 
auditoriums, that seated from two to ten thou- 
sand people, and to these centers came the peo- 
ple, crowding and thronging, to listen to lec- 
tures, political discussions, concerts, and the 
unfolding of the highest religious themes, and 
during ten days sixty great entertainments 
were given for several millions of people. As 
for property, if the rich are growing rich 
slowly through a falling rate of interest, the 



Foreword 

working people are growing rich rapidly- 
through a swiftly rising wage. 

As for morals, it is enough to say that the 
surety companies for bank clerks and men of 
position tell us that for three years the losses 
through dishonest clerks have been steadily 
falling, while the Conscience Fund in Wash- 
ington has been steadily rising. In the reli- 
gious world there have never been so many men 
going to church. And having preached in fac- 
tory towns and large cities, from New York 
to San Francisco and preached every day in 
the week, I have found that the people will 
crowd any theater, any church, any hall, at any 
hour from nine o'clock in the morning until 
ten o'clock at night, to hear straight sermons. 

Many men are discouraged because of the 
daily exposure of graft and corruption in busi- 
ness. But all these exposures, so far from 
justifying pessimism, are signs of progress. 
When the measles come out in great blotches 
on the face the patient looks badly, but the 
real danger appears when the measles strike 
in and disappear, leaving the skin smooth and 
the blood foul. Up in New England when the 
autumn leaves fall, the farmer cleans out the 
great spring on the hillside. Lifting his spade 
above that spring, the farmer looks upon water 



Foreword 

that is clear to the eye, but that holds within 
its depth the decay of leaves. When an hour 
has passed, and the exposure of mud is over, 
the water is roily and the child thinks the 
spring is ruined forever. But all the time, the 
water that comes down out of the mountain 
and gushes through some cleft is pure and 
sparkling, and once the surface mouth is 
cleaned the spring runs sweet and pure toward 
the house and on into the sea that awaits it. 
Everywhere men are saying that the country 
is besotted, that men are sodden in materialism, 
that every man has his price, that graft is uni- 
versal, and yet, at this very hour, the country 
is passing through the greatest moral and in- 
tellectual awakening it has ever known. Never 
were there so many honest merchants and 
manufacturers; never so many honest finan- 
ciers and railroad men; never were working 
men so intelligent, upright and disinterested. 
Any darkness there is on the horizon is morn- 
ing twilight and not evening twilight. 

This book is written, therefore, not from the 
viewpoint of the pessimist, but from the view- 
point of one who has been forced into optim- 
ism by much travel and by the pressure of 
events. Many times during the last summer I 
have given the substance of these chapters on 



Foreword 

the lecture platform, and have published others 
in various magazines and reviews. Mr. John 
R. Howard has done me the kindness to read 
these pages and prepare them for the press, and 
I gladly make recognition of my indebtedness 
to Mr. Howard for many helpful suggestions. 

Nev^^ell Dwight Hillis. 



The Forces Making for National 
Unity 

The republic of to-day and to-morrow is 
u theme that appeals to every patriot who 
loves his country, and looks forward to 
the time when America shall become the 
teacher of the world in liberty and free 
institutions. The historian gives us the 
America of yesterday ; the student of events 
gives the America of to-day ; the prophet and 
the man of vision beholds far off and future 
things and discerns the America of to-morrow. 
The task of the historian is by comparison 
a simple task. Looking back upon the rise 
and growth of a nation, the historian finds 
it easy to show how climate, food, seacoast 
and mountain range have modified a racial 
stock, and given a people its place among 
the nations of the earth. But a backward 
look upon the forces that have shaped the 
republic of yesterday is one thing and, the 
outlook upon the America of to-morrow is 
9 



The Fortune of the Republic 

quite another. Looking back on the rain- 
bow that stood on yesterday's horizon, the 
scientist finds it easy to show that the rain- 
drops were prisms releasing the beams of red 
and blue, but no scientist, by studying rain- 
drops and sunbeams can tell us when the next 
rainbow will stand on the horizon. 

One thing, however, can be done by the 
patriot who is interested in the fortune of 
the republic. He can make a careful analysis 
of the intellectual and political, the economic 
and moral conditions that have always 
preceded the golden age of cities like Athens 
and Florence, of countries like France, 
Holland, and England, and then he can ask 
whether or not conditions like to these are 
found to-day in American society. The con- 
dition of the Italian people during the era 
prior to the Kenaissance in Italy was strik- 
ingly like the conditions existing prior to 
the Elizabethan Era in England. In our 
own country also, as some believe, there 
exist the conditions that justify the hope of 
a great intellectual awakening. The watch- 
man of the night, who waits for the coming 
of the morning, knows when the dawn rises, 
and the student of affairs to-day knows when 
the horizon is ablaze with light. In a gen- 

10 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

eral way these are the conditions that in- 
dicate a unique intellectual movement and 
a golden age for the republic. The uni- 
versal diffusion of knowledge ; the increase 
of tools, that has redeemed the people from 
drudgery, and given our brightest sons and 
daughters the leisure to grow ripe and the 
opportunity to become wise ; the wakening 
of the sense of individual worth in several 
million newcomers, who, in the atmosphere 
of liberty have been roused to a con- 
sciousness of manhood, and have shaken off 
the fetters of old-world institutions as a 
youth shakes the leaves of autumn from 
his coat ; the widening effect of a war that 
has united the North and the South, broad- 
ened our horizon and made the republic a 
world-power ; the ethical awakening that 
has quickened the conscience, and is bringing 
about the transformation of the market-place, 
the street and the forum ; thus revolutionizing 
our corporations and commerce; the utter 
breakdown of unprincipled political and 
financial leaders, who yesterday were all but 
omnipotent and to-day are the slain giants of 
a dying regime; the emergence of moral 
considerations, in the political and financial 
world. But to all these influences must 
II 



The Fortune of the Republic 

be added the forces that are bringing 
about a hitherto unexampled unity among 
the eighty millions of our people. For the 
Golden Age has already come to any nation 
that is homogeneous, compact, one in its 
language, its commerce, its morals and its 
ideals for the future. 

Perhaps the most hopeful characteristic 
of our era is this increase of unity, this dis- 
solving of sectionalism, the breaking down 
of the barriers that once divided the JSTorth 
and the South, and more recently separated 
classes and nationalities. The time was 
when we had a Southern vote, a IS'orthern 
vote, an Irish vote, a German vote, and 
when the barriers between the labourers 
and the capitalists was as high as the wall 
of mountains that separates Austria from 
Italy. Be the reasons what they may to- 
day, the Irish vote and the German vote 
have disappeared and no longer disturb the 
welfare of the great cities. The national 
committees of our political parties no longer 
have to consider the German vote in New 
York or Chicago, or the Swedish vote in St. 
Paul and Minneapolis. To-day also, the 
solid South is breaking up, and so is the 
solid North. Sectionalism is like an iceberg, 

12 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

caught in the Gulf Stream. Gnawed by the 
sun at the top and the tropic currents at the 
bottom, the ice is disappearing and soon will 
lend itself to the universal ocean. Once 
Germany represented a score of states of 
different languages, different customs, di- 
verse dialects, but in that era Germany was 
weak. No architect of genius ever builds 
an Italian room, a French room, a Colonial 
room, a Japanese room, with a dozen other 
apartments representing as many different 
types of architecture and then tries to unite 
these rooms by putting over them a common 
roof. For three hundred years Germany 
found it impossible to throw a common 
government over twenty provinces repre- 
senting as many diverse people, dialects and 
languages. The task that confronts Kussia's 
statesmen to-day is the task of unifying wise 
people and ignorant people, patrician land- 
holders and peasant wanderers, people who 
hold the Greek faith and those who are 
Hebrews in their religion. Kussia's territory 
includes a score of climates, running be- 
tween the tropic atmosphere, with the fig, 
the olive and the lemon, and the Arctic 
steppes of Siberia, where pine and oak have 
chilled into the dimensions of dwarfed 
13 



The Fortune of the Republic 

shrubs, and mountain moss. Eussia's peo- 
ples are strangers, the one to another, 
diverse in blood, some with the tresses of 
the brunette, some with yellow hair and 
blue eyes, some the children of the plain, 
with many tribes representing sturdy moun- 
taineers. The task of making these warring 
enemies dwell together as friends, is a task 
for statesmen of genius all compact. Once 
our republic fronted similar problems ; now 
it seems to have solved these problems 
and secured a national unity. For the first 
time in the history of the world, the 
sun looks down upon nearly one hun- 
dred millions of people who have be- 
come homogeneous, with well-mixed blood, 
with the common enthusiasm for their 
country and its institutions, with a common 
pride in its past, and a common hope for its 
future. A consideration of the forces work- 
ing towards unity of sentiment in American 
life and thought is a theme worthy of re- 
flection, most fruitful and suggestive. 

The disappearance of dialects proves the 
victory of the forces that make for intellec- 
tual unity. Nothing unites people like a com- 
mon language. So long as the men on one 
side of the mountain use a different dialect 
14 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

from the people on the other side, there can 
be no real unity in thought and life. The 
time was when New England had its dialect, 
and Virginia her dialect. The whole South 
had its own peculiar rhythmic speech, while 
California had a dialect rich in staccato 
effects. But our great cities have become 
intellectual centres that have spread culture, 
and a common speech ; universal travel, also, 
assisted by commerce, are melting the 
dialects into one language. Out of the 
linguistic chaos there is slowly coming a 
rich and glorious cosmos. It is as if the 
eighty millions were being assembled in one 
vast whispering-gallery. Standing in the 
dome of St. Peter's the speaker finds his 
voice taken up and repeated until the slight- 
est word of invitation or alarm is heard at 
the remotest point of that gallery of sweet 
sound. IS'ot otherwise is the city becoming 
one racial sounding board, that sends the 
message of the statesman or the orator into 
the remotest corner of the land. Here and 
there, indeed, there is an occasional attempt 
to keep up the Old World language or 
dialect. Eecently several thousand Italians 
settled in one city. When two or three 
years had passed by, the fathers and mothers 
15 



The Fortune of the Republic 

were troubled because their children knew 
nothing about Italian. They therefore asked 
the priests to use Italian in the parish school 
and Italian in the Church service. But the 
boys and girls and the young men and 
women promptly struck. They insisted 
that they were Americans ; that in coming 
to this New World the Old World language 
had been left behind, with other foreign 
customs. When the sound of war died out 
and the smoke of battle cleared away, the 
sun looked down upon a body of youth who 
were American to their finger-tips. Doubt- 
less there will be other attempts to revive 
Old World dialects, just as there is an occa- 
sional dark cloud that lingers in the sky after 
the power of the storm has broken and the 
heavens are rapidly clearing themselves of 
clouds. Language has become a great dis- 
solvant. Unless our novelists do their work 
quickly, the dialect novel will soon be an 
impossibility. There can never be another 
Bret Harte, nor another Mary Wilkins, nor 
another story of Huckleberry Finn, for the 
dialects are passing. Atlanta, San Francisco, 
and New York are beginning to speak the 
same language, and the people of the re- 
public are becoming a solid nation, unified, 
i6 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

compact, organized, one in thought and 
speech. 

Another force that is unifying the people 
of the republic, is to be found in the press. 
Forty years ago there were many newspaper 
centres. Then every large city had its 
metropolitan daily and its World News and 
its Foreign Despatches. Now, there are 
three or four newspaper centres from which 
the costly world-despatches are radiated 
through many neighbouring States. New 
York's morning papers carry the Associated 
Press despatches with all foreign and national 
news to half a score of States. Slowly the 
papers in the cities of these States are be- 
coming local and family papers, discussing 
community interests in the evening, and leav- 
ing news of the world to the expensive 
morning paper. Chicago makes a similar 
radiating centre for ten or fifteen other 
States, as do Denver, San Francisco, and 
Atlanta. But these national and foreign 
despatches, published in these five centres, 
in the interests of the people of forty-five 
States, are one and the same despatches. 
Every morning, therefore, we have the 
amazing spectacle of eighty millions of peo- 
ple discussing at the breakfast table the 
17 



The Fortune of the Republic 

news of the Dreyfus decision in Paris, the 
oration of a peasant orator in the Douma of 
St. Petersburg, plans for the transcontinental 
railroad across Africa, the sailing of com- 
missioners from Pekin in search of a new 
constitution for China, a full account of the 
arguments on the railway rate bill in Wash- 
ington, with extracts from the orations and 
addresses before the various colleges, clubs 
and political conventions in the various 
States. The themes that are considered are 
national and world themes. The local news- 
paper brings to the household news and events 
that are purely local in character. To-day 
also, the rural postal delivery takes the metro- 
politan morning daily to every distant farm- 
house. The press is sowing the whole land 
with the good seed of universal knowledge. 
With amazing rapidity our people are becom- 
ing homogeneous. Historians account for 
the outbreak of genius in Athens by the 
homogeneity and compactness of that people, 
just as students of literature explain the 
Elizabethan Age by the oneness of the 
fifteen millions that thrilled to the voice of 
Beaumont and Fletcher, Marlow and Shake- 
speare. But our republic now stands on 
the threshold of a similar era of national 
i8 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

unity in things intellectual. To-day, the 
orator and statesman can be sure that 
the voice that sounds out in Washington or 
'New York will echo in the back seats of 
the top gallery in the Sierra Mountains. 
Whatever appeals to the intelligence and pa- 
triotism of the banker and merchant and 
working man of New York, or Phila- 
delphia, makes a similar appeal to the 
same classes in Galveston, Los Angeles 
and Seattle. Never before has the sun 
looked down upon the spectacle of eighty 
millions dwelling together in common in- 
tellectual unity, through a press that every 
morning asks all these millions to ponder 
the same national facts and world interests 
that relate to the progress of the family of 
man. 

To a degree hitherto unexampled, also, 
commerce and trade are now working 
towards the unity of the republic. Twenty 
centuries ago Plato called the ships of 
Phoenicia and of Greece travelling couriers 
for their respective cities and civilizations. 
With a similar conception in mind Sir 
Walter Ealeigh set sail to spread the power 
and influence of Queen Elizabeth through- 
out the world. But neither the philosopher 
19 



The Fortune of the Republic 

of Athens nor England's intrepid hero had 
the remotest realization of the power of the 
modern commercial traveller, or of the in- 
fluence of travel upon men who dwell in 
rural communities, through their repeated 
journeys to the cities. It is a proverb that 
trade follows the flag, but we know the flag 
generally follows the commercial traveller. 
No sooner is a new loom, a new plough, in- 
vented, a new comfort or convenience for 
the household developed, than a traveller 
sets forth, to spread the new object of use 
or beauty through the Middle States and 
the great West. Scarcely has the improved 
sewing machine-appeared in Hartford before 
it reappears in San Francisco. Long ago, edu- 
cation, through the public schools, became 
a contagion. We believe in knowledge for 
all the millions. We have given the suf- 
frage to the millions. We believe in relig- 
ious liberty for the millions, but now has 
come an era when the comforts and con- 
veniences of life must be diffused among 
the millions. Does some great artist paint 
an inspiring canvas? Straightway it is 
reproduced in colour, and trade scatters 
it to the multitudes. The printing-press 
carries the new poem to the millions ; the 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

factory carries the new shuttle to the mil- 
lions ; the loom carries the mercerized 
cotton to the millions; the factory makes 
a fountain pen for the millions. Every 
Monday a hundred thousand commercial 
travellers pack their trunks, and start out to 
unify the eighty millions of the American 
people through trade and commerce. Any 
comfort and convenience that is developed 
in a northern city spreads like a concentric 
wave towards the cites of the Gulf and of 
the Pacific. The cable has brought London 
within a stone's throw of JSTew York, and 
anchored Yokohama just outside the harbour 
of San Francisco. The railways and tele- 
phones have made Chicago and St. Louis 
suburbs of JSTew York. There is a Chicago 
gentleman who has commutation tickets to 
New York. He lives on the shores of Lake 
Michigan but does business in Wall Street. 
And every day travel, trade, commerce, the 
telephone and telegraph, the automobile, 
the canal boats, and the ships, serve as 
shuttles, that are weaving the industrial, intel- 
lectual and commercial threads that make 
up the texture of American civilization, 
cloth of gold and purple whose beads and 
pearls are towns and cities. This tex- 



The Fortune of the Republic 

ture of civilization that lies across our land 
fulfills blind Homer's words, "it is the 
golden garb of God." 

The influence of political campaigns and 
the discussing of public questions, work for 
national unity. In the very nature of the 
case, once every four years, the whole 
nation is turned into a political debating 
society. For two months, eighty millions 
of people rise up early and sit up late to 
consider public questions raised by the two 
political parties ; What is financial truth ? 
What is the truth about a high tariff ? and 
free trade ? What is money ? How do 
silver and gold serve as the mechanism of 
exchange ? Why do railroads pool their 
rates to destroy competition ? What is the 
best method of controlling the railroad and 
compelling it to serve as a common carrier 
for manufacturer and farmer alike? If a 
foreigner were to take the train at the 
Atlantic, start towards the Pacific in the 
autumn of any presidential election, at 
twilight he would find the little country 
schoolhouse lighted up, and all the farmers 
assembled, to listen to a political debate 
between a Kepublican and a Democratic 
orator. He would find crowded theatres in 

22 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

the cities, the halls of the smaller towns 
packed with the multitudes ; he would listen 
to reviews of the history of the two par- 
ties, to analyses of the character and career 
of the different candidates; he would find the 
eighty millions separating the wheat of ar- 
gument from the chaff, tossed about by the 
orators. Athens once had her week for the 
Olympian Games when the whole city 
assembled to watch the contests for one 
day ; afterwards for six days they listened 
to the orators and dramatists. But never 
before has the world witnessed a two 
months' festival for the discussion of social 
problems. What a university of politics is 
opened for 80,000,000 of people, once every 
four years ! 

Never before was there such a debating so- 
ciety in the history of the human race; 
never so open a field for the orator and the 
youth ambitious of office and political 
honour, l^ever was the highway of ambi- 
tion so clear of barriers for eager aspirants. 
The temple of political fame stands open by 
day and by night, and he who can carry 
the confidence of the people may enter it. 
Monarchies and empires represent govern- 
ment by the few. It is therefore, a very sim- 
23 



The Fortune of the Republic 

pie thing for these select hereditary leaders 
to come together and canvass the economic, 
financial and civic issues before the empire ; 
but a thousandfold more of majesty and 
dignity attaches to the spectacle of eighty 
millions of citizens, entering a sixty days' 
school, for the study of the problems of the 
government. Let the critics say all they 
will about the fume and fever of selfish 
politicians, and scheming candidates for of- 
fice, it still remains true that the political 
campaigns of the republic put the whole 
nation to school in finance, reform and poli- 
tics. We read with reverence the story of 
that scene when eleven disciples cast lots 
for an apostle who should take the place 
of the traitor Judas, but if there is any one 
scene more inspiring than another, it is the 
sublime spectacle of eighty millions of 
people coming together to consider the in- 
terests of free institutions, and to select 
leaders and counsellors who shall guide the 
people to their destiny. It may not be easy 
for skeptical minds to conceive of the infi- 
nite God, drawing near to the solitary indi- 
vidual who works in shop, factory, or farm, 
but certainly, the spectacle of eighty mil- 
lions of people, casting lots in the interests 
24 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

of justice, liberty, equal rights, for all, is a 
spectacle that would justify the entrance of 
an infinite God into the scene. 

But a new force, making for the unity of 
our people has now appeared in the diffusion 
of the beautiful among the millions. The 
time was when the beautiful was confined to 
the palaces of the rich men of Athens or 
Italy, to the temples and cathedrals, and 
later, to castles and mansions. But the poor 
people of Athens and Rome, Venice and 
Florence, lived in rude huts, wore leather 
garments, walked on dirt floors, knew ugli- 
ness and squalor. Now, the beautiful is dif- 
fused through the common life. Art is 
organized : It has taken wings and feet to 
itself. Not content with dwelling in the 
palace and mansion it has entered the 
cottage and farmhouse. Art to-day has 
touched the dining-room table and sprin- 
kled beauty over knife and fork, and linen. 
Beauty has lent loveliness to the paper on 
the wall and the ceiling. Beauty adorns the 
hall that welcomes the stranger, the parlour, 
for hospitality, and the library for wisdom. 
Leaving the ox-cart behind, man's day- 
coaches have become palace-cars. It is no 
longer enough that the magazine or book 
25 



The Fortune of the Republic 

holds wisdom; the frontispiece must be 
beautiful also, and the margins must be 
decorated. Clothing has become artistic; 
the woman's coat must have lovely lines, 
and the colours of the garment must be 
harmonious. 

Living, itself, has become a fine art. After 
centuries of ugly architecture and monstrous 
house-building, cities are appointing com- 
missions to study landscape-gardening, to 
limit the height of buildings, to unify the sky- 
line on the streets. The daily press and mag- 
azines also, through photography and the 
lithographer's art, have reproduced the great 
masterpieces of genius, with pictures of 
castles and cathedrals, and public buildings, 
and the portraits of great men and women. 
For ^ve cents, the working man through 
his newspaper can secure a coloured photo- 
graph with which his little children may 
adorn the walls of the room until the poor 
man's house becomes a bower of beauty. 
One may find apartments in tenement- 
houses of any city whose walls are more 
beautiful through prints than the walls 
of the rooms in Kenil worth Castle, where 
Queen Elizabeth was entertained by Lord 
Dudley. And little by little, this diffusion 
26 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

of the beautiful is creating a common 
standard of taste among the millions. Al- 
ready, we have in Paris some ten thou- 
sand young Americans studying painting, 
architecture, music, sculpture, and decora- 
tion of books and magazines. These young 
men and women will design furniture for 
houses and plans for wall-paper and ceil- 
ings. These thousands will return to their 
native land to revolutionize the art and 
architecture, and the streets, of the republic. 
The City Beautiful is already being set up 
on earth. The musician does not want a 
broken string on his harp. The organist 
does not want a discordant pipe in his instru- 
ment. Of necessity the beautiful is now be- 
ginning to exert an influence upon the morals 
of the people. The drunkard is a broken 
string on the national harp. The criminal 
is a discord in the racial song. The poor- 
house and the jail are blots on the national 
canvas. The whole nation is striving to- 
wards racial beauty, harmony, and symme- 
try. And when the great scene is com- 
plete, it will be found that art and beauty 
are working as magicians to unify the mil- 
lions and make them one in their love of 
beauty and of truth, expressed through 
27 



The Fortune of the Republic 

their pictures, magazines, raiment, cars, 
houses, parks, cities and civilizations. 

Reform, also, has become a minister of 
unity. The root idea of reform is social 
sympathy. Sympathy is solicitude for the 
millions who are unfortunate. Sympathy 
is the soul rushing forth to see how- 
events go with one's fellows. The sym- 
bol of sympathy is a flaming heart. The 
name of this sympathetic one is Great 
Heart as opposed to the Great Mind. 
Arnold Toynbee found his opportunity for 
sympathy in the sorrows of the people who 
lived in Whitechapel, the scene of ghastly 
murders. The hundreds of social settlers 
in the many university settlements in our 
great American cities, find their opportu- 
nity for sympathy in the tenement-house 
regions of the Bowery or Halstead Street 
in Chicago. The sorrow^s and wrongs of 
little children of ten to twelve years of age, 
working in the glass-factories, the cotton- 
mills and the shops, offer an opportunity to 
lovers of the poor. The revelations of hor- 
rible conditions in certain food industries, 
the wrongs worked upon the multitudes 
through rebates given to corporations, the 
evils incident to unjust taxation, represent 
28 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

reform moveraents affecting millions, 
worked out through editors of magazines, 
through different authors and their books, 
and through the addresses of representa- 
tives in legislature and in congress. These 
reforms tell the people that the injury of 
one citizen or class of workers is the injury 
of all. The story of the sorrows of men 
and women in one industry — whether in the 
sweat-shops of the city, the factories of Xew 
England, the mines of Pennsylvania, or 
among the children of the South — sets all 
hearts vibrating with sympathy and thrill- 
ing with pain. Men cannot eat their feast 
in happiness while others are famishing. 
They cannot enjoy their furs while others 
shiver. So sensitive are men becoming to 
the wrongs of their kind, that while the 
news of San Francisco's sorrow was still 
hot upon the wires, in hundreds of cities 
calls were sent out for public meetings ; and 
scarcely had the wires stopped vibrating 
the story of need, when the same wires 
began to thrill with the transfer of gold 
and bread to the people of the stricken 
city. Eighty millions of people became 
good Samaritans for one day. The sor- 
row of one city was the sorrow of all 
29 



The Fortune of the Republic 

cities ; the desolation of one State was 
the desolation of the whole land. The 
American heart is becoming as sensitive 
as an ^olian harp. To-day the faintest 
sigh of suffering stirs a movement on the 
strings. The reason is very simple ; at last 
we have become a solid people. There are 
no sections, and racial barriers have dissolved 
like walls of ice. 

We have one mind, through the news- 
papers and schools, and we have one heart, 
through the reforms and religions. The 
old Greek myth tells us how Prometheus 
brought fire from heaven. When the 
god beheld the sons of men shivering 
in the winter, he wanted to diffuse the 
gifts that belonged to the gods. In 
his solicitude for the sons of men he stole 
the divine fire and went forth with 
his sacred torch. That god of sympathy 
entered the peasant's hut, and lighted the 
fire on a stone hearth, and left huddled 
and shivering savages happy and singing 
with delight about a warm hearth. He 
found the traveller lost in the night, and 
gave him a torch. He searched out the 
mother, at midnight, crooning over the 
sick child and gave her a lamp, in whose 
30 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

rays she fulfilled the task of bringing 
cure for pain. For the multitudes going 
through the wilderness, with groans and 
tears, he kindled the pillar of smoke by 
day and the pillar of fire by night. How 
beautiful the myth of Prometheus, telling 
us how sympathy can transform a world, 
and how reform can unify the millions 
until the}^ laugh with those who laugh, and 
weep with those who weep, in sorrow and 
social distress. Yerily, if the press and the 
school are bringing unity through a common 
intellectual life, reforms are unifying our 
eighty millions through sympathy and social 
service. 

More important still is the influence of 
the schools and colleges as unifying forces. 
What the press, politics, art, commerce and 
religion are doing to make the adult millions 
homogeneous in thought and life, is being 
done for childhood and youth by the schools 
of the republic. Take them all in all, our 
educators have become the greatest single 
intellectual force in the land. No words 
can describe the debt of the republic to its 
teachers, who now make up the fourth pro- 
fession, not less honourable than the other 
three, called the law, the ministry and 
31 



The Fortune of the Republic 

medicine. Great has been the change in 
public sentiment. After a century of 
neglect of the teacher in that he has been 
paid the least of all the public servants, at 
last the educator is coming to his own. Al- 
ready college presidents have become the 
outstanding figures, and the nation owes it 
to the teaching profession to make some 
one of these educators president of the 
republic. Influenced by the new enthusiasm 
for education, the most gifted youth in our 
universities are passing by other callings, to 
become teachers. 

During the last ten years the percent- 
age of college students entering the law, 
medicine and commerce has decreased, but 
the teaching profession has gained, at the 
expense of all the other three. The public 
school system grew out of a singular neces- 
sity. The Pilgrim Fathers and Puritans 
were picked men. They had enjoyed every 
opportunity in England, through fathers 
who believed that the higher education was 
essential to a life that was inbreathed of 
God. To live in God's world assumed a 
knowledge of God's laws. To live happily 
in God's world assumed the practice of obe- 
dience to the laws of God's world. To 
32 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

teach their children these laws the fathers 
rose up early and sat up late, to drill their 
children in the great facts of Nature^ his- 
tory, government, and religion. But when 
the fathers began their career in this new 
world, they were confronted with a thou- 
sand problems, incident to subduing the soil, 
sowing the harvests, planting vineyards and 
orchards, bridging streams, building farm- 
houses and villages. Through pressure of 
work the fathers found it impossible to be- 
come specialists in educating their own chil- 
dren. In their emergency they came to- 
gether and forty fathers agreed to cast lots, 
and select one man who should educate the 
children of thirty-nine other homes. They 
decided also to tax themselves to support 
this teacher, and to found a college. They 
cherished the ideal of making every boy and 
girl a scholar. They baptized the whole 
life with the spirit of religion and of 
education. They exalted the educator to 
the level of the magistrate and the minister. 
One of their descendants gave to his State 
and nation the proverb, " A schoolhouse on 
every hilltop and no saloon in the valley." 

Little by little, the State became an educa- 
tional parent, fostering these schools, and 
33 



The Fortune of the Republic 

strengthening by gifts of land and gold the 
college and the university. Government 
in other nations is largely material in its 
laws. Certain Parliaments can be men- 
tioned that are mere boards of trade. They 
legislate to deepen rivers, and to build war- 
ships to float on the tide. Our government 
believes that the best way to take care of a 
river is to educate the people on the banks, 
and so to diffuse wisdom, through the arts, 
sciences and literatures. The real superior- 
ity of the American working-man rests 
upon the public school system, and the high 
average of American education. So intel- 
ligent have our people become that they 
handle the most expensive material in the 
factories without wasting it. Through the 
high average of education our working peo- 
ple manufacture the most complex articles, 
use delicate mechanisms, create costly fab- 
rics. It is this high average of the intelli- 
gence, also, that encourages the hope of a 
great intellectual monument during the next 
generation. We ripen our oranges and figs 
only in a genial atmosphere. Great painters, 
poets, musicians, inventors of genius are 
the after-fruits, ripened in the warm at- 
mosphere of universal intelligence. All in- 
34 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

tellectual giants stand on the shoulders of 
their fathers and the common people. The 
signs of a new intellectual outburst are not 
wanting on the horizon. Already the whole 
sky is ablaze with light. If we do not see 
our great men it is because you cannot see 
the trees for the thickness of the forest. 
The common schools are unifying the peo- 
ple. Death removes the first generation of 
foreigners, but the schoolhouse makes their 
children genuinely American, while all 
the races are becoming one race, because 
all are scholars as well as patriots — intelli- 
gent, with hungry minds, alert, hospitable 
to every new truth and interest that con- 
cerns the people of the republic. 

Students of the signs of the times are pro- 
foundly moved by the wave of enthusiasm 
for education that is now sweeping over the 
working-people and farmers of the land. 
History holds the story of no similar ren- 
aissance. Fifty years ago Emerson, Wen- 
dell Phillips, Gough, Beecher, Curtis, Chapin, 
journeyed up and down the land, as lec- 
turers. Every little city had its lyceum and 
lecture course. But in its palmiest days 
the lyceum of fifty years ago was never as 
popular as the lecture-course of to-day. 
35 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Within the past five years save in cities 
where the drama holds the field, there has 
been a revival of interest in lectures. Men 
who have the art of putting things, and 
have skill to instruct the people, could fill, 
if they had them, a thousand nights a year. 
There are single towns, of five thousand 
people, in distant States in the Mississippi 
Yalley, that pay $2,000 a winter for their 
twelve lectures. Even in the summer, when 
men are busiest, in an agricultural state like 
Iowa, there are fifty summer Chautauquas, 
each lasting from ten days to three weeks. 
Thousands of people assemble in a great tent 
or amphitheatre. Men and women, who 
have left behind forever the schoolroom and 
the college halls, give ten days and nights 
to the intellectual life. The work begins at 
nine o'clock in the morning, with lectures 
on politics, history, reform, literature, art, 
science, with one great concert every day, 
one illustrated lecture a day, and one public 
discussion. 

In some of these summer schools at the 
same hour, there are many different classes 
of work, with many instructors. And 
what is going on for the adults of the rural 
districts is going on for the denizens of the 
36 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

city through the opening of the public 
school buildings at night, that mature men 
and women may enjoy something of the 
higher education. Our colleges and uni- 
versities belong to less than half a million 
people of twenty years of age, but there are 
scores of millions busied in the factory and 
store who never have had and never can 
have years of leisure, yet who want and 
believe that they may have, something 
that is equivalent to the college education 
open to their children. Nothing is more 
certain than this, — the next generation 
is to found night colleges for adults, 
where men and women, from thirty to 
seventy, will, in eight or ten years of study 
during the evenings, get the heart of a col- 
lege education that hitherto has belonged 
to youth alone. One college like this, with 
its classes for working-men and women has 
grown up in Philadelphia, whose enrollment 
has increased to more than four thousand 
students. Best of all, these working people's 
colleges are self-supporting. Every man 
pays his fee when he comes in to the even- 
ing lecture. If the professor of political 
institutions lacks either the knowledge or 
the skill to make the subject clear to his 
37 



The Fortune of the Republic 

one hundred men, they desert him, and 
automatically secure his resignation, — a 
method that offers suggestion to the trustees 
of many an American college, who are con- 
sidering whether it is right to chloroform 
inefficient instructors. The duty of the 
hour is the opening of ail the school-build- 
ings of the country for lectures in the even- 
ing for the parents, even as they have been 
open in the daytime for the instruction of 
the children. The next step after that 
must be the founding of working-men's 
"colleges in the large cities. Our life has 
become so complex, our institutions so highly 
developed, that every worker must be a 
scholar. Coincident with the necessity, has 
come this enthusiasm for education, that 
witnesses to the ever-increasing intellectual 
unity of the adult population of the re- 
public. 

More striking even than the spread of 
mental training, is the influence of moral 
instruction upon national unity. One of 
the most caustic, witty, and successful of 
the playwrights of our day has just an- 
nounced that he intends to write a relig- 
ious play, because Americans are interested 
in nothing except politics and religion. 
38 



The Forces Making for National Unity 

But long ago every department of Ameri- 
can life became a schoolroom in morals. 
It is highly significant that one of our great 
mercantile firms announces that it will take 
back all goods that are found to be something 
other than they were represented. Manufac- 
turers have learned that their best advertise- 
ment is a reputation for absolute honesty in 
the goods they make and the tools they sell. 
Business has become a school of manhood, 
where industry, application, patience, stead- 
fastness, courage, self-reliance are the in- 
direct resultants. But the Church, Protes- 
tant and Catholic, still remains the teacher of 
morals. The Sunday is still the library-day 
for brooding and reflection, the day for the 
family, the day for song and worship, the 
day for replenishing of the ideals, the day 
whitened by the songs and penitence and 
prayer of earth's greatest souls for genera- 
tions. The old emphasis of man-made state- 
ments and creeds is gone. John Huss and 
John Calvin, John Wesley and Jonathan 
Edwards, those sons of thunder, like the 
first John in his first estate, have been 
relegated to their place as great men, but 
have ceased to eclipse the name of Jesus 
Christ. All these have become mere candles 
39 



The Fortune of the Republic 

while the teacher of Bethlehem and Cal- 
vary stands forth, the one untroubled sun. 

The golden hour of instruction on Sunday 
has become too rich and precious for wast- 
ing a single moment in discussions about 
the amount of water in baptism, or some 
theologian's ideas about fate and free will. 
Valuable beyond all words, these few mo- 
ments that must be kept for the great sim- 
plicities of the evangel of God's love, the 
good news of Jesus Christ. The three out- 
standing words in the modern pulpit are Jus- 
tice — the love of the Eternal Yea and jN'ay ; 
Philanthropy — the love of Christ's poor and 
weak; Piety — the love of God, the soul's 
Maker and Father and Guide. Christian- 
ity has become the science of saving the 
soul from temptation and sin, and the art 
of manufacturing a fine quality of manhood. 
Passions and sins have become as foolish as 
thorns and thistles and burrs in a wheat- 
field, or rose-garden. 

The virtues of the Sermon on the Mount 
and of the Christian life have become as 
natural, as beautiful and alluring as lilies in 
the garden-bed, as purple clusters on the 
vine, or fruit upon the bough. One 
result is that if President Dwight found 
40 



The Forces Making for National Unity- 
one or two men in Yale College who 
were Christians, in an era of atheism, 
now the overwhelming majority of young 
men in the colleges and universities 
are openly Christian, having pledged them- 
selves to clean living, to justice, to right- 
eousness and sympathy, and good will. 
Through this emphasis of the great simplic- 
ities the churches are drawing together. 
Because the people in the pews have 
become one, the leaders and bishops and 
moderators are coming out for church unity. 
Most significant, that last conference on 
Arbitration and Peace at Lake Mohonk, 
where Cardinal Gibbons led the devotions 
one morning. Dr. Lyman Abbott the next 
day, Bishop McYickar the third, while a 
distinguished Quaker gentleman, Mr. Albert 
Smiley, presided over all. Once, speaking 
discord and hate, men were confused at the 
Tower of Babel. Later, at Pentecost, peo- 
ple of forty languages were unified through 
a common truth and love. At last has 
dawned a golden age when eighty millions 
of people are with one accord, with one 
spirit, a solid nation — assembled in school- 
house, market-place, art-gallery, and in the 
temples of science, beauty and religion, 
41 



II 

The Passing of Sectionalism in the 
New South and North 

Nearly half a century has passed since the 
clash of arms resounded on Yirginian fields, 
and opened the most destructive and momen- 
tous conflict of modern times. The interven- 
ing years have been many and long, but 
neither time nor events have availed to 
diminish the importance of that struggle or 
to lessen the value of its results. Bitter 
was the conflict, for the great Kebellion 
was perhaps the fiercest war that has ever 
shaken the earth. Long ago God's grass 
healed over the scars that cannon-balls had 
made, but still the Southern hillsides are 
billowy with our country's dead. Among 
our people, the month of May is dedicated 
to the memory of fallen heroes, and we do well 
to recall their struggle and to celebrate their 
victories. In retrospect its events hang on 
the walls of memory like the shields of 
valorous enemies. Nothing educates like 
emergencies, and the memory thereof. The 
42 



The Passing of Sectionalism 

measure of a nation's wealth is the number 
of just battles it has fought, and the right- 
eous victories it has won. That nation is 
greatest that has the greatest number of 
events to celebrate. Savages have no 
Fourth of July, because they had no strug- 
gle with tyranny. Indians have no Wash- 
ington's Birthday, because they have no 
power to create a hero. They have no 
decoration of graves, because they have 
never had a host of patriots struggling 
unto blood in behalf of their convictions. 

History assembles the soul-treasures of 
the republic, as a great exposition gathers 
its material riches. Walking through 
some World's Fair, like the one at Paris or 
St. Louis, one gazes with admiration and 
amazement at the riches collected. What 
architecture ! What art ! What books, 
and what wisdom in them ! What looms, 
and presses ! What ships, and engines ! It 
seems as if all the manufactures, all the rich 
silken stuffs, all the grain and fruits, had 
taken feet unto themselves and journeyed 
to one strategic spot. The genius of all 
inventive minds has been swept together in 
a single city. And not otherwise is it with 
the history of our Civil War I That crisis 
43 



The Fortune of the Republic 

produced great men. Emergencies put 
men on their mettle, and led forth all their 
latent resources. That war, that filled the 
whole horizon with the smoke of battle, 
gave the world two of its six greatest 
soldiers of history ; gave us one of the world's 
six great statesmen, Abraham Lincoln ; 
gave us three of the greatest inspirational 
orators the republic has produced. If some 
historian were to call the roll of one hun- 
dred men whose names lend distinction to 
the pages of our history during the past 
three hundred years, perhaps one-half of 
these illustrious names would belong to the 
epoch that culminated with the war. Im- 
portant, therefore, these national anniver- 
saries, recalling the past, and giving con- 
tinuity to our history. They make us touch 
hands with a generation of heroes. 

It was said of the German patriots who 
fell on a certain battle-field, that always on 
the anniversary of that victory their spirits 
returned to the scenes where they fell. Do 
our founders and fathers ever think of their 
children ? Do the heroes and patriots ever 
return to the scenes of their struggles and 
victory? Do the noble dead ever draw 
near to the heavenly battlements, and look 
44 



The Passing of Sectionalism 

down upon these noisy streets in which we, 
their children, are fulfilling our appointed 
tasks ? Hope hears their footsteps and Love 
is stirred by the rustle of their garments. 
Let us believe that we are not forgotten, 
that they live, understand, and can never 
forget. For the torch that burns for our 
guidance was lighted upon altars they built 
and standing in front of these altars, in 
thought, we celebrate their valour, their 
loyalty, and their devotion to duty. 

Great battles and wars, like mountains, 
need perspective. To small events distance 
may lend enchantment ; to large events, it 
lends proportion. We never understand 
the Alps until we leave Switzerland behind 
and approach the frontiers of Germany. 
Then looking back towards the Bernese 
Oberland, the pilgrim for the first time 
appreciates the wall of granite and iron 
with the bastion and tower at one end, 
named Mont Blanc, and the granite peaks 
of the Matterhorn at the other, safeguard- 
ing the rich valleys at their feet. And now 
that forty years have passed we are far 
enough away to understand the message 
and meaning of the great war. At the 
time, what patriot could understand the 
45 



The Fortune of the Republic 

reason for the long, long conflict ? What 
waste of human lifel What needless de- 
struction of towns and cities I Has man no 
better use for his brother man than to run 
him through with iron and cover him with 
earth? At first the tide ran against the 
Federal cause at Bull Run, and the North 
cried out, " Hath God forgotten the cause 
of the poor and weak — the cause of the 
slave?" At Gettysburg Meade turned 
back Lee's victorious host, and thenceforth 
the wave of battle, flecked with fire, rolled 
southwards. 

For four long years the struggle went on, 
but now at last we have the perspective. 
The smoke has cleared and the mountain 
peaks stand forth. We begin to understand 
things that once were hidden. Perhaps the 
long contest was necessary. Perhaps 
slavery as an economic mistake and indus- 
trial sin was a cancer that had fastened it- 
self into the very vitals of Southern life. 
Perhaps it was necessary for God to anoint 
the surgeon of war with oil that was dark, 
that with knife made sharp and cautery of 
flame the stern surgeon might cut out the 
disease that threatened the national life it- 
self. Perhaps, also, the North was a young 
46 



The Passing of Sectionalism 

giant, growing coarse, materialistic and over- 
strong. What if a nation needs to be made 
perfect in suffering, like the Great Captain 
of our Salvation Himself? And perhaps, 
too, that notable war focalized the thought of 
the Old World monarchies upon the young 
republic. Prior to the attack on Fort Sum- 
ter, the English or German newspapers 
scarcely ever had a line about American 
affairs. The Old World scoffed at our ideas 
of liberty. Despotic peoples are ignorant. 
Now, suddenly, all nations of the earth 
compete for our favour. Old nations imitate 
us. Students from other capitals come to 
our shores to study our institutions. All 
the world is going to school to the republic 
to learn liberty. But it was the great war 
that first caught and held the attention of 
monarchies for four years. 

In letters of fire God wrote the lessons of 
the republic so large that peoples across the 
sea could read our message of liberty. 
Long ago the Austrian Emperor visited 
Innsbruck. Above that little city rise the 
mountains of the Tyrol Alps. Climbing 
the steep mountainside, the people hewed 
down the forest, and piled the trees in the 
shape of letters. One dark night at ten 
47 



The Fortune of the Republic 

o'clock, the Emperor's suite arrived in Inns- 
briick. And suddenly, across the mountain- 
side, there flamed forth these words, " Wel- 
come to our Emperor," written in letters of 
fire. So, when the Providence of God 
would fix the eyes of foreign nations upon 
the republic. He needed a large canvas. 
He wrote the lesson of liberty in letters of 
flame that reached from Bull Kun to Yicks- 
burg. "What a canvas was that, involving in 
a battle-field a thousand miles long, a million 
men in arms ! 

But time also has taught us another les- 
son, as to how God has overruled the events 
of the war. The battle-fires burned all 
barriers away between the South and the 
North. The Southern people had been 
drilled by Calhoun for thirty years in the 
doctrine of State sovereignty, as Webster 
drilled our fathers in the doctrine of the 
Nation's sovereignty. Stonewall Jackson 
believed in his cause with the ardour and 
enthusiasm with which the crusaders fought 
for the tomb in Jerusalem. When his sol- 
diers were encamped on the rough banks of 
the Rappahannock, it was like one camp- 
meeting, and great revivals swept through 
the Southern army. They committed their 
48 



The Passing of Sectionalism 

cause to God. When Providence decided 
against State sovereignty, and for I^ation's 
sovereignty, they said, " It is the will of 
God," and they accepted the arbitrament 
of war. Go into the South to-day, and you 
find the same fidelity to the republic that 
you find in the North. Do not think that 
New York has a monopoly of patriotism 
and love for this republic, above Atlanta or 
New Orleans ! 

Do not cherish hatred and anger in your 
old age against your Southern foe. Are not 
forty years long enough for forgiveness? 
Is it the part of chivalry and magnanimity 
for members of the Grand Army to refuse to 
march with Confederate soldiers in the city 
of New York ? All true patriots, I deeply 
deplore the unseemly rekindling of old is- 
sues. What God forgives, man should forget. 
Not to forgive as we are forgiven, is ignoble. 
A Northern veteran, who fought and still 
hates his foe, is less honourable than a South- 
ern veteran who fought and accepted the 
issue of events, and then gave in his adher- 
ence to the republic and its flag. It is my 
fortune to know many Southern soldiers, 
and if every man and woman of the North 
were stricken down by pestilence, this re- 
49 



The Fortune of the Republic 

public would be safeguarded by the South. 
If some foreign foe were to send battleships 
hither, and every member of the Grand 
Army of the Kepublic were to perish, these 
Confederate soldiers and their sons would 
rise up as one solid band to protect the in- 
stitutions of this country, and stand for the 
flag of their forefathers and ours. Not one 
institution of this land would be permitted 
to suffer while their right hands are strong 
enough to draw a sword. The North is full 
of patriots, but so are these Southern States, 
where, in ten thousand homes, soldiers with 
their chivalry and women with their af- 
fection are rearing sons and daughters in the 
love of the home land, in the faith of the 
founders and fathers, and in devotion to the 
old Declaration, and the old flag that is still 
the banner of hope for the nations of the 
earth. At last, thank Godl the time has 
fully come for the reign of brotherly love 
between the North and the South. 

Superficial minds may think that the 
reunions and recollection of the past minis- 
ter to vanity and pride. But wise men know 
that they nourish patriotism, stir civic pride 
and feed the sentiments of loyalty and devo- 
tion to duty. Dr. Samuel Johnson once said, 
50 



The Passing of Sectionalism 

that Patriotism is the last resort of a scoun- 
drel. Dr. Johnson was a great maker of 
dictionaries, but in this case he knew little 
about the meaning of words. His sentiment 
is as false as it is foolish. Hypocrisy is the 
compliment that falsehood pays to religion. 
A counterfeit is the compliment paid to 
honest coin, and the affectation of patriotism 
is the recognition of the value of love of 
one's country. Whenever patriotism has de- 
clined, the nation has already entered upon 
the beginning of the end. Contrariwise, the 
rise of patriotism, sweeping over the land 
like an advancing flood, has always been fol- 
lowed by an outburst of genius and material 
prosperity. The Old World is full of ruined 
heaps that once were great cities. But 
when the historian stands beside a broken 
column in what was once Carthage, and 
questions the past, the night wind becomes 
the voice of the dead city, as it whispers, 
" My people did not love me ; therefore am 
I dead." 

For countries, coming events cast their 
shadows before. Shortly before the fall of 
Jerusalem had left not one stone of the Tem- 
ple upon another, a true patriot left the hills 
of Galilee behind Him, and stood on the 
51 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Mount of Olives looking down upon the city. 
It was the capital for the country of His 
soul. It was His city, His Father's city, the 
city of Mount Zion, intended to be the joy 
of the whole earth. But priests, and Phari- 
sees, and rulers loved not their country, but 
themselves. One patriot was left in the 
land, the carpenter of E"azareth. Standing 
under the olive-trees, He stretched out His 
hand towards the walls, the towers, and the 
glorious Temple, while He cried out, " Oh, 
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I 
have gathered thee, as a hen gathereth her 
chickens under her wings, and ye would 
not I " For lack of patriotism, that city be- 
came a heap and a ruin. When enthusiasm 
for one's country wanes, death hath already 
set in. The cynic, the spoilsman, the greedy 
politician, the predatory merchants, the ban- 
dits of the corporation — these spoil the city 
and their institutions, because patriotism 
is dead within them, and they no longer 
love their country. Every consideration of 
national prosperity, therefore, is an argument 
for patriotism, and its development and 
nurture. 

Perhaps patriotism begins with pride in the 
resources of one's country. Association may 
52 



The Passing of Sectionalism 

make little lands dear to the people therein. 
But the vastness and the richness of our 
country compels pride. Of its physical re- 
sources we can only say, God hath not dealt 
so with any other nation. Ours is a verita- 
ble wonderland. It is fitted to be the home 
of three hundred millions of people. So 
vast is our country that many of us who 
have lived here a lifetime cannot compre- 
hend its extent, because we have not travelled 
over it. Think of the achievements of Ger- 
many, the history of France, the glories of 
Italy I Here we have a single State named 
Texas into which the greater part of Ger- 
many, France and Italy could be swept. 
Simply to understand that vast State, you 
must take the cars and travel all day long 
through wide forests. Then take the cars 
and travel another day through the rich rice 
fields. The third day will carry you across 
the pastures and meadows, covered with 
herds and flocks. Yet that State but faintly 
images the country as a whole. Other peo- 
ple are proud of their country and its prin- 
cipal river. Englishmen are very proud of 
their lovely little Thames. The Italians 
are also proud of their little yellow 
Tiber, which could be dropped into the 
53 



The Fortune of the Republic 

yellow Missouri without making a splash 
or raising the " Big Muddy " a half -inch 
in flood tide. The Seine is a long stream 
— that is, measured by a Frenchman's yard- 
stick. But we have a river named the 
Yukon that would stretch from Hudson's 
Bay on the north to New Orleans on the 
south. What treasures in this land as 
yet undeveloped! Four-fifths of all the 
fresh water on the globe are in our lake 
system. A country with a river and canal 
system in the Mississippi Yalley running 
out to the right and the left, like the keel 
and the ribs of a ship, turning the whole 
interior into a system of canals and water- 
ways for commerce ; wood enough to house 
the world ; coal enough to warm the world; 
iron enough to tool the world ; wheat enough 
to feed the world ; cotton enough to clothe 
the world ; gold and silver enough to finance 
the world. 

Another ground for love of the republic is 
found in the institutions of our country. 
The test of a nation's value is the kind of 
man it produces. Some one has said that 
" The first business of a nation is the manu- 
facture of souls of a good quality." Without 
fear of contradiction, we boldly affirm that 
54 



The Passing of Sectionalism 

the institutions of the republic have built 
men of good quality. Turn your eyes to- 
wards the East, to Russia. What reverses 
she has suffered ! Every time she fronts a 
foe, she fails. Her soldiers lost every charge 
they made; her sailors lost every ship 
they took into battle. They would not 
fight. Why should they ? They had noth- 
ing to lose or gain — the aristocrats had all. 
Plainly, despotism turns strong men into 
feeblings. But the republic has taken these 
feeblings, and in a generation turned them 
into giants. Despotism has dried up the 
springs of genius until a man like Tol- 
stoi or Maxim Gorky is as solitary as a 
palm-tree in an infinite desert. This repub- 
lic turns an intellectual waste into a garden, 
feeds all the springs of intellect, fills all the 
land with men of force. The despotism may 
declare that there are no great men in this 
country. The answer is that in the republic 
all are to become great through the diffusion 
of intelligence and opportunity. Despotism 
thinks that it is unsafe to trust liberty to the 
common people. The republic cures all ills 
by giving more liberty, more, and still more 
liberty. Ye shall know governments by 
their fruits. The despotism of Russia has 
55 



The Fortune of the Republic 

produced 95,000,000 who can neither read 
nor write, out of a population of 130,000,000. 

But what are the soul-fruits of the re- 
public? Can our institutions make poor 
boys to be strong men ? The republic took 
a blacksmith, named Elihu Burritt, and 
made him an accomplished scholar ; took a 
boy husking corn in Kentucky, and made 
Henry Clay to be a great orator and senator ; 
took one boy driving a mule along a tow- 
path, and another boy living in a log shack 
in the woods of Indiana, and led Garfield 
and Lincoln towards the White House. How 
glorious the history of our self-made men ! 
How romantic the rise and victory of poor 
boys ! How many widows' sons have en- 
tered the halls of eternal fame ? Ye shall 
know them by their fruits. And the fruit- 
age of manhood in the republic is a unique 
order of manhood, that includes soldiers, 
statesmen, inventors, merchants, heroes, sav- 
iours of the people. If despotisms have with- 
ered manhood, and shrunken souls, it would 
seem as if the whole family of man must go 
over to free institutions, because of the qual- 
ity of manhood that liberty has produced. 

More wondrous still the regenerative 
power of our institutions. Last year nearly 
S6t 



The Passing of Sectionalism 

a million immigrants came to our shores, 
and nearly one-half million have come al- 
ready this year. For every eighty people we 
now have, one new man will come. This 
year is to be most fruitful ; the outlook for 
the shocks and sheaves is most promisinq*. 
Cotton and sugar and rice are to bring rich 
returns ; the herds and flocks are increasing, 
but our biggest crop is — immigrants. One 
million of them, including two hundred 
thousand men — each man is equal to a fac- 
tory worth ten thousand dollars, bringing in 
hwe hundred dollars, at a five per cent. rate. 
What if Europe had offered us 200,000 
Baldwin locomotives each costing $10,000? 
That is, two billions of dollars added to the 
nation's wealth. These new peoples rep- 
resent the best that the Old World has. 
Only the strong, the courageous, the self-re- 
liant venture far from home, and dare. 
Some who have not stopped to consider 
are alarmed. They say these immigrants 
will produce slums ; but the greatest slum 
district in the world is in London, and the 
Whitechapel slum district of London is 
ninety-eight per cent. English. There are 
few immigrants there. The next slum dis- 
trict is in a little section in Glasgow, 
57 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Scotland, and this slum centre is pure 
Scotch, with no dilution of immigrants. 
The next slum centre is South Ireland — 
pure Irish. Why these three slum districts, 
do you ask? Why, because the strong 
son and daughter emigrated from those 
regions to our country. You say immigrants 
will dilute the blood, that they are poorly 
fed and half starved ? Well, a youth who 
was starved and poorly fed, landed here some 
forty years ago. You would have turned 
him back. But he has gained all he could 
eat, and all he needed to wear, for our Presi- 
dent says that he is Kew York's most useful 
citizen, and you call him Jacob Eiis. And 
do you think that this young Dane diluted 
your blood ! Well, a little rich blood like 
his is what your poor blood needs ! Herbert 
Spencer saw with instant vision that the 
coming of the finest and bravest of these 
foreign peoples here, would, through the mix- 
ture of the bloods, give a new order of man- 
hood. Can we safely trust our institutions 
to these multitudes to whom Washington's 
name means nothing and Lincoln's name is 
unknown ? Our language is not their lan- 
guage, our heroes are not their heroes, our 
battle-flag is not their banner, our revolutions 
58 



The Passing of Sectionalism 

are not wars in which their fathers had a 
part. Is it true that " when the ox eats grass 
the ox does not become grass, but the grass 
becomes ox"? Already Boston and ISTew 
York are the largest Irish cities in the world. 
Manhattan is now the capital of the Hebrew 
race. The time was when Eome was the 
greatest Italian city, but now it is Brooklyn 
and New York. Sweden's king finds that 
the largest half of his people are in the re- 
public. One million came from old Europe 
last year, another million and more will 
come this year. 

But the newcomers are picked young men 
and women. It takes courage, nerve, and 
confidence in one's physical and mental re- 
sources, to leave your native land. Stand on 
the dock and watch the Italian family that is 
bidding farewell to the emigrants who are 
about to sail from Naples to New York. It is 
the biggest, bravest boy that leaves his native 
land. This emigration of the best young 
Irish boys and girls is what gave us the Irish 
problem, because most of those who stayed 
behind were of infirm health not equal to 
the perils of a new world. England has just 
waked up to discover that she has an Eng- 
lish problem, with three million paupers, 
59 



The Fortune of the Republic 

and other millions needing out-of-door relief. 
It could not be otherwise, when she has been 
sending her brawniest and healthiest sons 
of each family to Australia, New Zealand, 
South Africa and Western Canada. There 
will always be room for the picked youths 
of the old world so long as we have the ter- 
ritory to support them. As yet we are not 
crowded. Why, you can put all France into 
New York, New England and Ohio. You can 
drop Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain, with 
Switzerland and Portugal, into the states 
east of the Mississippi. Then you can put 
China into the states north of the Red Eiver 
and west of the Mississippi. Texas will swal- 
low Great Britain, Ireland, Denmark, Hol- 
land and Belgium. Now drop Japan into 
California, like a stone splashing in a lake. 
Oregon and Washington will be left for any 
chance nation in Christendom that we may 
have forgotten ; and then Alaska will open 
her capacious arms and offer to take them 
all in again. We need ten millions of these 
people to irrigate the great mountain States. 
We need twenty millions of them for Texas 
and the Pacific States, and they also need 
the opportunities of the republic. 
Thank God, they are all bitten with land- 
60 



The Passing of Sectionalism 

hunger. Four out of five of our immigrants 
make their way to the farms within two 
years after landing in New York. So 
plastic and teachable are they that when 
one generation has passed over these new 
peoples, lo, they have shed all their Old 
World customs. Quickly they become 
Americans to the last drop of blood in their 
fingers. If possible, their patriotism is 
more intense than that of the native-born 
Americans. The reason is very simple. 
They " know the pit from whence they were 
digged." Liberty is very sweet to men 
who have been in a dungeon. It is hunger 
that makes bread so good to the taste. 
After the long darkness of oppression, the 
light of liberty is good to the eyes. Did 
any of you hear that Italian citizen when he 
told us why he came to this new land ? 
" Why ? Do you ask me, why did I come 
to your country ? Was it because your skies 
were bluer than Naples ? Your cathedrals 
grander ? Your statues more beautiful ? 
Your art more precious ? Oh, no ! One 
night, sleeping in my Italian home, I saw a 
vision, and in my dream I beheld Liberty, 
God's dear child, come down to the sands 
of your seashore. Standing there, she stood 
6i 



The Fortune of the Republic 

with her beautiful face looking eastward to- 
wards my land, and stretching out her white 
arms, she whispered, ' Yenite 1 Yenite ! ' 
*Come, come my dear children I ' Obedient 
to Liberty's command, lo, all these Italiansare 
here." Those of you who heard that apos- 
trophe know that eloquence is not yet dead. 
Nor can it die so long as these people cherish 
such unbounded enthusiasm towards the re- 
public that already they call it " My Coun- 
try." 

All those rich forms of soul called home, 
liberty, industry, education, religion, rest 
back upon and are created by the institu- 
tions of the Land. Whatever therefore in- 
jures the ideals of republic, injures all 
its citizens. When the summer suffers, all 
the grains and fruits suffer with it. Once 
the canker goes to the heart of the na- 
tion, the individual citizens begin to decline, 
just as any injury done to the root of the tree 
means that the leaves will shrivel. The 
vines that cling to the trunk must fall when 
the tree comes crashing down. History is 
full of the epitaphs of dead cities, states 
and empires. Yesterday holds the ruins of 
as many perished nations as Greenwood 
holds separate graves. And once the nation 

63 



The Passing of Sectionalism 

begins to decay, we may know that the man- 
hood has decayed also. The measure of any 
government is the number and fitness of its 
institutions to nourish and support manhood. 
Exterior forces, commerce, navies, literature, 
government, cannot found or support a 
mighty commonwealth. As for war, France 
once won a hundred victories, and yet she 
has steadily declined into the rank of second- 
class power. As for commerce, Venice once 
sent red ships into every sea, but there was 
a canker at the heart of the people. As for 
the fine arts, Florence once was the flower of 
cities, but social corruption and political in- 
justice pulled her down. 

All wise men know that there are clouds 
on the horizon of our nation. But observant 
men ought also to recognize that there is not 
a virtue that has built other nations up that 
is not being taken into the national life of to- 
day and to-morrow, while there is not a vice 
that injured the nations of yesterday that 
we are not to-day trying to expel from our 
cities and states. In his Birmingham address, 
James Russell Lowell affirmed that democ- 
racy was still an experiment. Perhaps that 
depends upon what Mr. Lowell meant. In- 
tellectual democracy is certainly not an ex- 
63 



The Fortune of the Republic 

periment, for the opening of the public and 
high schools alike to every rank and class of 
society has justified itself in the citizens pro- 
duced. Ecclesiastical democracy has not 
failed, for the contrast between the manhood 
produced by autocracy in Spain and the type 
of manhood produced in this republic, where 
every man is free to be his own bishop and 
potentate, is a contrast that speaks for itself. 
Industrial democracy has not failed I Wit- 
ness the increase in the comforts, conveniences 
and wealth of the working classes, since the 
free-contract system was adopted. It re- 
mains therefore to say that Lowell must 
have meant that political democracy is still 
an experiment, by reason of the breakdown 
of government in the great cities. To all 
of which the sufficient answer is found in 
the civic revolution that is sweeping over 
the land, during these days, when our best 
citizens, who have achieved distinction 
in some realm of life, are being exalted to 
offices, aldermen, leaders of the primary, 
mayor, and rulers of the city. Our gener- 
ation stands at the beginning of a new day, 
when our best and noblest men are to resume 
their ancient civic rights, and govern them- 
selves. 

64 



The Passing of Sectionalism 

To-day we are surrounded with a great 
cloud of invisible workers ; inventors who 
gave us these tools ; soldiers who crimsoned 
our country's flag ; merchants who have 
filled may a storehouse and shop and gran- 
ary. These are the leaders who smote the 
rocks that they might gush with fountains ; 
these are the patriots and prophets who 
called down manna from heaven ; these are 
our intrepid fathers who guided the multi- 
tude in the wilderness march. Many of this 
great band have gone. Oh, what golden 
suns of genius and patriotism have already 
set ! What orbs of moral and mental glory 
have fallen forever beneath the horizon I 
Wide and generous that gate through which 
the great souls depart. Sometimes it seems 
as if the great who go, are more than the 
leaders who come, to this generation. But 
the fathers who have gone have left the 
charge of that intrepid hero of the old chiv- 
alry, who plunged into the thick of the 
:6ght, calling back, " Follow my white 
plume I " And it is for us, recalling the 
faith of the fathers, and the institutions they 
have achieved for us, to swear fidelity to 
their principles and to hand their institutions 
on unimpaired to our children's children. 
65 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Have faith in God and in your institu- 
tions. Open anew the history of your coun- 
try. Eead again the story of the great 
war. Look long and reverently into the 
face of Abraham Lincoln. Swear fealty 
to your country. Be no partisan, but a 
patriot. Get wealth, but never get a 
dollar through the bribery of city officials, 
that makes you an enemy of the republic. 
Eeraember that the heroic dead have made 
vows and given pledges for you. Great 
were our soldiers, and their blood is in your 
veins. Eloquent the orators and wise the 
statesmen, and you are their sons and daugh- 
ters. Heroic were our martyrs, and at their 
graves you should dedicate yourself to the 
cause which they loved. Here and now, in 
the heart, build out of the memories of the 
past, the monument to the nation's dead, 
the Fathers and Founders — mav their mem- 
ory never fail ! Our brave men young and 
old — may their number never lessen ; our re- 
public with its institutions of liberty — may it 
outlive them all 1 



66 



Ill 

The Institutions of the Republic and 
Their Fitness for New Peoples 

Tkadition tells us that our Pilgrim 
Fathers claimed the promise of God to 
Abraham as the sanction of their voyage, 
their quest of a new world, and their dream 
of an ideal commonwealth. Obedient to a 
divine command, following an invisible 
leader, they forsook country and kindred, 
and went forth unto a land that was hidden 
beyond the horizon. On the morning that 
they were to set sail from the harbour of 
Delft Haven, the Pilgrim Fathers formed a 
solemn procession. After the sermon had 
been preached, and Robinson had told 
them that " more truth and light were yet to 
break out of God's word," the procession 
formed in front of the church and marched 
down to the seashore. As they marched, 
John Robinson carried on his hands an open 
Bible. Above all the sound of the marching 
there rose the voice of the heroic leader, 
reading aloud these words : " Get thee out 
67 



The Fortune of the Republic 

of thy country, and from thy kindred and 
from thy father's house, unto a land that I 
will show thee; and I will make of thee a 
great nation ; and in thee shall all the 
families of the earth be blessed." In that 
hour, these heroic men who were the 
builders of states, and to be the founders of 
the new commonwealth, claimed this com- 
mand of God to Abraham, and His promise 
to the father of the faithful, as a pledge 
vouchsafed unto them, and to their children 
after them. 

A sublimer scene the pages of history 
do not hold I A more glorious promise 
to men was never given to any, save to 
Him whose ISTame was above every name. 
And now that nearly three hundred years 
have passed, behold how literally the prom- 
ise has been fulfilled. What Old World 
monarchy has not gone to school to this 
republic, to learn free institutions ? How 
strangely through the Pilgrim Fathers, in 
the reforms of Japan, have the families of 
the world been blessed ! 

Falling upon the sands of the seashore, in 

sight of the little Sjpeedwell^ the Pilgrim 

Fathers sang a solemn song. The women's 

voices were full of sobs; the men's eyes 

68 



The Institutions of the RepubHc 

were dim with tears. Their leader com- 
mended to the providence of God all these 
who were to go down into the sea in a little 
ship. When weeks had passed, they dropped 
anchor in the harbour of Plymouth ; in the 
midst of a driving snow-storm the men 
waded ashore, carrying the women and 
children through the icy surf; they built 
their cabins, they made the church to be in 
the centre of the public square, towards 
which all streets converged ; the building 
that on Sunday was used as a school of 
morals and conscience, on Monday became 
the school of intellect and education. Then 
they founded their town meeting, and 
grouped their towns into a commonwealth, 
with laws governing the associated villages. 
And at last, out of the free school, the free 
church, and the free institutions, they de- 
veloped the seed-principles that ripened into 
our free institutions. That was the heroic 
age in our history. Yerily, there were 
giants in the world in those days. Then 
New England grew great men. " The world 
will soon forget what we say here, but the 
world can never forget w^hat they did here." 
We trace all our republican facilities, the 
American home, the American school and 
69 



The Fortune of the Republic 

college and university, the freedom of our 
press, all our political institutions, back to 
those early days, when our fathers hammered 
out their ideas of liberty on the anvil of ad- 
versity and struck off those ideas that were 
finally gathered up in our Constitution; 
which Mr. Gladstone called " the greatest 
political instrument ever struck off by the 
unaided mind of man." 

The formative period of the republic 
ended with the Constitution in 1789, and 
then the period of testing began. The re- 
public included three million people. The 
fundamental institutions of liberty were 
fully developed, in that the people of the 
town had charge, through their elected 
officials, of matters that belonged to the 
Council; while the State took charge of 
those interests that were common to all the 
various towns ; and the Federal government 
received authority over the things that 
belonged in common to all the States. All 
this made up a political engine, at once the 
simplest and the most complex that has ever 
been developed. Free institutions assume 
intelligence and moral culture, l^o youth 
is fitted to inherit an institution, whose fore- 
head is not on a level with the inventor 
70 



The Institutions of the Republic 

thereof. To create wealth requires great in- 
telligence ; intelligence is also needed to ad- 
minister wealth. Stephenson's locomotive 
incarnates his genius. But no man is fitted 
to be engineer whose intelligence is not 
equal to the amount of intelligence that 
Stephenson put in his locomotive, plus the 
intelligence that makes the engineer equal 
to the possible accidents of the engine. In 
like manner, our political institutions incar- 
nate the genius of the father and founders 
of our republic, Washington, Hamilton and 
Jefferson. But no youth is fitted to lay 
hands upon the civic mechanism who has 
not carried his brain and conscience up to 
the level of Washington and Franklin, and 
the forefathers, at the hour when they in- 
vented these political instruments. To give 
a throbbing locomotive into the hands of a 
child is a crime as well as a peril. Our 
fathers believed they had, in the free 
church, the free school and the Christian 
college, with the right of suffrage, instru- 
ments that would make and keep all Ameri- 
cans to be scholars towards the intellect, 
Christians towards the church, patriots 
towards the republic. 
To their praise be it confessed that for 
71 



The Fortune of the Republic 

nearly two hundred years their educational 
institutions justified the hopes of their 
founders. In that far-off day every citizen 
in the New England community was intelli- 
gent, patriotic and Christian. History tells 
of New England towns where men had no 
locks upon the doors ; where theft was un- 
known ; where, in a hundred years, a divorce 
was never heard of; w^here illiteracy was 
all but unthinkable. In those days there 
was no civic corruption. On election 
morning the citizens formed a procession, 
marched to a church, listened to a sermon, 
and then the elector went forth to vote, as 
in the sight of God, with no reference to 
self-interest. In those days a man would 
no more have used his ballot for personal 
aggrandizement, or against the interest of 
the community, than he would have put his 
hand in the fire. Those were glorious days 
for the republic. The roots and boughs 
were then being compacted that finally 
ripened into the rich fruitage of genius repre- 
sented in the Concord group. "When we 
celebrate Emerson's one hundredth anniver- 
sary, we must not forget the eight genera- 
tions of clergymen that were back of him ; 
and when we find that thirty-eight per cent, 
72 



The Institutions of the Republic 

of the men mentioned in biographical dic- 
tionaries are the sons or grandsons of clergy- 
men, we remember what these Christian in- 
stitutions did for the laws and the literature 
and the liberties of the republic. The first 
epoch in the republic, therefore, was the 
formative one, when the institutions were 
developed, and the second epoch includes 
those years when these institutions were 
tested and tempered and proven through 
the character of the men they produced. 

The third great epoch for the republic 
began with the era of expansion, when 
Puritan New England heard the com- 
mand: "Get thee out from thy country 
and thy kindred into a land beyond the 
Alleghanies that I will show thee." One 
day a traveller stopped his horse on the sum- 
mit of the mountains of what is now 
Western New York or Pennsylvania. Put- 
ting his hand to his ear, he stood in a listen- 
ing attitude. " What do you hear ? " 
whispered his guide, fearing lest the 
painted Indians were in ambush near by. 
Then uncovering his head, the orator an- 
swered, " I am listening to the tramp of 
coming millions." These travellers, return- 
ing from the West, brought marvellous tales 
73 



The Fortune of the Republic 

about the riches of the valley of the Ohio ; 
about the forests of Indiana and Illinois ; 
about the black soil of the Mississippi. 
A strange impulse fell upon all the people. 
It was such an impulse as fell upon Abraham, 
that emigrant who made his way to the 
country of the Jordan ; it was such an im- 
pulse as fell upon the three million emigrants 
who followed Moses through their desert into 
their Promised Land ; it was such an impulse 
as fell upon the Huns and the Goths, when 
they left the steep cliffs of Northwestern 
Europe, and marched to the southwest 
towards sunny Italy. 

In the olden time the spirit of God 
moved upon the face of the dark w^aters. 
And in 1780 to 1790 the spirit of God was 
abroad, moving upon our fathers. For 
nearly two hundred years they had been 
toiling upon their ideals of the home, the 
college, the church, the press, with ideals 
of political liberty. God had shut them up 
in that little, barren, rugged land, sur- 
rounded by the sea on the one hand and the 
forests on the other. In the olden time. He 
shut the Jewish people in between the 
Mediterranean and the Jordan, and left 
jbhem to grow their prophets, their martyrs^ 
74 



The Institutions of the Republic 

their teachers, their apostles. Then, when 
the flood of life-giving waters was piled 
high, the obstruction was swept away, and 
the command was to go into all the world 
and carry forth the evangel of peace. 
When God wants to make a man or a nation 
great, He puts them in prison. He shuts 
Homer in by blindness ; He shuts Dante in 
by exile; He shuts Bunyan in by prison 
walls ; He shuts Socrates in a jail for thirty 
days, that he may make a statement about 
immortality ; He shuts Greece up between 
the sea and the mountains ; He shuts Rom- 
ulus in upon a little tongue of land named 
Eome ; He shuts the Swiss people in between 
the Bernese Oberland and the Jura-Simplon ; 
He shuts England in upon a little isle ; He 
shuts the Dutchman between the hungry 
waves of the North Sea and the Spanish 
forts ; He shuts the Pilgrim Fathers in be- 
tween the Atlantic and the great forest and 
the savage beasts and still more savage 
men. 

But at last our fathers had developed their 
message and were ready for their world 
movement. In 1789 the barriers went 
down, and our fathers became the evangels 
of national liberty, and their sons became 
75 



The Fortune of the Republic 

evangelists to a new nation. One day 
Manasseh Cutler assembled his people in a 
Congregational Church at Ipswich. The 
morning was Monday. A strange proces- 
sion was formed in the streets. Men in 
hunters' garb, boys carrying their guns, 
woodsmen with axes, pack-horses heavily 
laden — all these made up a strange proces- 
sion when they marched to the church. A 
third time a preacher opened a service with 
these words ; " Get thee out from thy 
country and thy kindred, into a land that I 
will show thee. And I will bless thee, and 
in thee shall all the families of the earth be 
blessed." Then began another marvellous 
movement to puritanize the entire continent. 
Our fathers founded the Western Keserve in 
Ohio, and gave us the great ordinance of 
1Y89, that Daniel Webster thought was the 
barrier against slavery. Home missionaries 
went into Illinois. Then the Andover band 
went into Iowa and founded Iowa Col- 
lege, Tabor, and two academies. Groups of 
theological students banded themselves 
together. They determined to take the 
great West for higher education. These 
groups of men were picked men, the finest 
scholars of their era, graduates of our best 
76 



The Institutions of the Republic 

colleges. They were men of means also — 
some of them among the richest men in 
New England. They were statesmen ; wit- 
ness the fight that they and their sons made 
for liberty. They were out upon no quest 
of the Golden Fleece, they were out to 
spread American manhood. And never 
was a promise given to emigrants more 
gloriously fulfilled. The Christian home, 
the Christian church, the free school, the 
Christian college, were instruments fitted 
for the development of manhood. What 
towns they founded ! What colleges they 
built up ! He who goes through these new 
Western communities exclaims, What vine- 
yards ! What orchards ! What bridging 
of mighty rivers I What tunneling of moun- 
tains ! What cities springing up as it were 
in a night ! How does the land hum with 
industry and tremble with the stroke of 
the locomotive and the trip-hammer. The 
story of the influence of the Christian 
educators and missionaries in the great 
West is the most thrilling story in the 
history of civilization. And we can never 
forget that our Pilgrim Fathers, having 
puritanized New England, through their 
sons went forth to New Englandize the 
77 



The Fortune of the Repubhc 

Middle States. So on through the home, 
the church, the school, and the library, 
they New Englandized the great West also. 
When the shock of the Civil War came, it 
was the Puritan spirit that shotted the guns 
against slavery, and the watchwords of the 
Pilgrim Fathers finally battered down the 
defenses of slavery. Take it all in all, 
what page in history is so enthralling as 
the story of these Christian teachers and 
preachers and educators who Americanized 
the new peoples of the great West ! 

Of late, the institutions for Americanizing 
and Christianizing our population have been 
strained to the uttermost. However rap- 
idly it may become so, the population is not 
now homogeneous, and we have not di- 
gested the new peoples as rapidly as they 
have come. Certain great crises in the his- 
tory of the country explain this fact in part. 
In retrospect, we perceive that the crises 
were three. The first one came in 1845. It 
grew out of the annexation of Texas. Our 
people became greedy of territory. We 
identified national bigness with national 
greatness. Many of our great leaders were 
opposed to national avarice and theft. In 
the conflict Senator Corwin said that if he 
78 



The Institutions of the Republic 

was a Mexican or a Texan he would welcome 
the American soldiers with bloody hands 
to hospitable graves. Every evil, however, 
can be overruled for good, and this event has 
apparently been overruled for the Republic's 
good. But the new territory, with the new 
raw peoples, represented an enormous task. 
And the American church and the American 
school and the American home did not as- 
similate the people as rapidly as they 
poured in. 

Then came the great crisis on the Pa- 
cific Slope, in 1847. One day a man discov- 
ered a little yellow metal in a pile of sand, 
and the lustre and glint made his heart beat 
wildly. In a few months ships crowded 
with adventurers sailed from Liverpool 
around Cape Horn, and from France and 
Portugal, from IRew York and Boston and 
New Orleans. A long column of gold-seek- 
ers crept slowly across the American desert. 
A new nation was born in a day beyond the 
Rockies. Crime was rampant. Drunken- 
ness and robbery were all but universal. 
The era of lawlessness was followed by the 
era of the vigilance committee. There was 
no Sunday, no Bible, and it looked as if God 
had never crossed the Missouri River. Try 
79 



The Fortune of the Republic 

as the church would, Christian preachers and 
Christian educators found it impossible to 
begin their work until the community and 
institutions had begun to harden. Whoever 
has spent a Sunday on the Pacific coast under- 
stands that the four institutions for com- 
pletely assimilating and Christianizing our 
new populations have not yet caught up 
with their task. What is the fascination 
that belongs to the pages of Bret Harte ? It 
is the sharp contrast between the JS'ew Eng- 
land ideals and the wild lawless life of the 
old regime of California. 

The third great strain came with the in- 
flux of the foreigners from the Old World. 
Allured by the story of the industrial wealth 
of the great interior, they poured in by 
blocks of a half-million per year. This year 
alone, the immigrants will number probably 
one million. We have already some twenty 
million foreigners or children of foreign- 
born parents. They are German, Bohemian, 
Polish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, French, 
Eussian, Hebrew ; they are Spanish, Portu- 
guese, Italian, Syrian. And still, like the 
descent of the Huns on Rome for its de- 
struction, they come in upon the republic 
for our help and salvation. There are many 
80 



The Institutions of the Republic 

pessimists who are alarmed at the invasion. 
But let us take no counsel of crouching fear. 
If we do our duty, our free institutions will 
Americanize and Christianize them, and 
after the bloods have been well mixed, there 
will stand forth in this republic the finest 
type of man, physical, that the world has 
ever seen. Why should you despise the 
Hun, and count him the dirt and off-scour- 
ing of the earth ? Out of the Hun God 
made John Huss. Why do you despise the 
Italian ? Out of some Italian dust God 
made Dante and Savonarola, and Garibaldi 
and Mazzini. Why do you despise the 
Poles ? Out of some Polish dust He made 
Kossuth, just as out of a German He made 
Martin Luther, and out of a Jew He made 
Paul. What ? Afraid of the new peoples ? 
This is like a farmer being alarmed lest the 
golden wheat be too heavy for his sickle. 
This is like a miner being terrified lest there 
be too much gold in the veins. This is like 
a cotton manufacturer being afraid of the 
news that the cotton bales are coming in so 
fast as to overwhelm his factory. When 
the Kiver Nile overflows its banks, and mud 
is scattered all over Egypt, the deeper the 
mud, the more the farmers rejoice. For the 
8i 



The Fortune of the Republic 

deposit of dirt means fertilization, and the 
richer rice. And if we back up with our 
sympathy and our gifts our home mission- 
aries and our Christian educators, if we 
stand for the American home and the 
American school and the American church 
and the American Sunday, if we bring these 
great influences of God and His divine word 
to bear upon men's conduct and character, 
these new populations will lend strength to 
the arm and foot of the republic, and its 
brain and mind and heart ; but if we allow 
the people to go unchristianized and un- 
Americanized, we do so at our peril. And 
we shall play false to our fathers, just in so 
far as we are faithless to this task of spread- 
ing Christian manhood in every part of our 
country. 

Beholding the bridges across the chasms, 
and tunnels through the mountains, the 
superficial mind may think that to contrast 
the work of the intellectual and moral 
teacher with the builders of the towns and 
cities is to compare small things with large. 
But investigation may do away with the 
criticism, and possibly the moral teacher may 
stand forth a striking figure, unique and 
even preeminent in the influence that abides. 
82 



The Institutions of the Republic 

Indeed, if history tells us anything, it insists 
that the moral teacher has always been a 
builder of states, and a founder of common- 
wealths. 

Our generation makes much of men who 
equip the state, who clothe the state, and 
feed the state ; it is in danger of overlook- 
ing those who instruct the state, who inspire, 
exalt and refine the moral sentiments of all 
the people. If we go backwards through 
the centuries, where shall we find a great 
commonwealth, that was not founded by a 
moral teacher ? Witness the Hebrew com- 
monwealth, founded by that pioneer and 
immigrant named Abraham. Witness the 
redemption of the noble Jewish race, and the 
establishment of the theocracy in the Prom- 
ised Land, — the achievements of a moral 
teacher named Moses. Witness the found- 
ing of the Grecian cities, for even in their 
legends they trace the beginning of each 
city back to a man who stands for wisdom 
and morals. Back of modern Germany 
stands the pulpit of Martin Luther. Back 
of Holland stand the two great religious 
teachers. Behind the Pilgrim Fathers be- 
hold the form of preacher John Eobinson. 
When Fiske tells us that the influence of 
^3 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Connecticut on our free institutions was 
preeminent, he traces Connecticut's democ- 
racy to that minister, Thomas Hooker. 
And what shall we say of the settlement of 
the great West, save this, that a minister 
led the first group of pilgrims across the 
Alleghanies. Daniel Webster insists that 
the ordinance of 1787, that safeguarded 
from slavery all the States north of the Ohio, 
was outlined, not by jurists or statesmen, 
but by a moral teacher named Manasseh 
Cutler. Not less striking the influence of 
the moral preacher in the other Western 
commonwealths. 

Faneuil Hall is famous for Wendell Phil- 
lips' speech on the death of Lovejoy. But 
Wendell Phillips could speak well in safe 
Boston, because a minister named Owen 
Lovejoy first lived heroically in perilous 
Illinois. Having lived for liberty and the 
printing-press, the minister died for them 
also, and his death made easy an hour's 
speech in the Boston hall. The story of 
Iowa and the other Western states is one 
story with the other commonwealths. 
Twenty-five home-missionaries led twenty- 
five different bands of colonists out of New 
England, to settle that great commonwealth 
84 



The Institutions of the Republic 

between the Mississippi and the Missouri 
Kivers. The founding of their churches was 
only the beginning of their work. They 
hastened on to new forms of labour, for the 
home, the schoolhouse, the academy and the 
college. Kead the history of the " under- 
ground railway" movements in the great 
West. The stations of this railway for es- 
caping slaves were always in the town where 
dwelt some member of the old Iowa band 
of missionaries. When the war broke out 
these missionaries became recruiting ofl&cers, 
and during those four awful years the home- 
missionary churches were without teachers, 
for their pastors were either chaplains at 
the front, or carrying muskets. Nor must 
we forget their work in the interests of the 
lyceums of the great West, or their influ- 
ence on the wide-spread temperance cam- 
paign, furthering sobriety and prudence. 
Time forbids any rehearsal of the history of 
the Eocky Mountain States, unless we add 
that the history of Marcus Whitman is the 
history of the saving of Washington and 
Oregon. 

Like Moses, these home-missionaries went 
out from the land of their fathers, enduring, 
by the sight of Him who is invisible. In an 
85 



The Fortune of the Republic 

old poem, the peasant sits in his hut, dream- 
ing. While he dreams, the hut rises into 
the dimensions of an abbey, the little win- 
dows become large, arched, and full of rich 
glass. The low ceiling rises up and be- 
comes the vast dome, covered with the faces 
of angels and seraphs. The low rafters are 
exalted into the dignity of splendid towers 
and pinnacles. His children, dead, reappear 
as celestial beings who hover in the air 
above him, and cast treasure down upon 
his broken life. It is a German poem, 
familiar to you all, but it tells the story of 
the rude West, once covered with wandering 
bands of Indians, with trappers and hunters, 
and now the centre of vast states, a region 
abounding in towns and cities and shops and 
factories. There is that great valley of the 
Mississippi, of which Mr. Gladstone said, it 
will be the home of many a Leeds and Man- 
chester, many a Sheffield and Birmingham, 
and when some time has passed, will clothe, 
feed and supply the world. And we must 
always remember that the names of the 
founders of these commonwealths are the 
names of the moral teachers who crossed 
the Alleghanies and led their colonists into 
their promised land. 

86 



The Institutions of the Republic 

In all generations Christianity has kept 
good company. For it is as true of an ethical 
system as it is of a man, that it is " known 
by the company it keeps." In those far oif 
countries, Christianity maintained a warm 
friendship with the fine arts. It was found 
much in the company of noble music, the 
Glorias, the Te Deums, and the oratorios. 
Christianity has always lingered long under 
the roof where Liberty hath her dwelling 
place, and made friends with the Law alsa 
Not less striking, its relation to the higher 
education. In the far-off yesterdays, the 
Christian leaders founded universities, to 
consider great themes, like the nature of 
the soul, the government of God, the 
ground of right, the meaning of con- 
science, the forgiveness of sins, the hope 
of immortality. During the last century 
also, the church has maintained its interest 
in the higher education. If we were to 
mention the names of the colleges between 
the Atlantic and the Pacific, how few of 
them were not founded by home-mission- 
aries I Here in New York, Union and Ham- 
ilton ; in Ohio, Oberlin on the north, and 
Marietta on the south, not to mention a 
score of others. In Illinois, there are Knox 
87 



The Fortune of the RepubUc 

and Lake Forest, and thirty more, large and 
small. In Iowa that historic Iowa band 
founded two colleges at Grinnell and Tabor, 
and two academies, before they had people 
enough to act as trustees and professors. 
And history holds no finer example of faith. 
What is the result ? Well, they have reared 
many leaders. 

You have often been told that as goes 
New York so goes the country. People 
never tire of telling us that Eome makes 
Italy, Paris shapes France, London controls 
England, New York rules America. But 
the statement is chiefly interesting for this 
reason — it is not true. Sometimes one wishes 
it were true that this splendid city by the sea, 
including within its limits some of the wisest, 
and noblest and best men that any genera- 
tion has ever known, did possess unique pre- 
eminence and control of the nation. Great is 
the power of New York. Wonderful its 
financial influence. Not less wonderful its 
newspapers and publishing-houses and 
churches, and banks and railways ! But 
where do the men who control this city come 
from ? Startling as the fact is, we must con- 
fess that three-fourths of them come from the 
rural districts, and one-half of them from 
8S 



The Institutions of the Republic 

the great West. The other day an editor 
commented upon certain eminent positions 
representing enormous interests scattered 
over the country, and chiefly owned in New 
York. What men were selected as presidents 
of railways or heads of these great financial 
and industrial systems ? Eight of the ten 
men were brought in from the far West, 
because they had been trained on the ground, 
knew the system at first hand, and had the 
physique demanded. That is why one some- 
times feels that if you want to profoundly 
influence New York you had better start 
for Oregon. A reading of the catalogues 
of our schools of law, medicine and theology, 
tells us that nearly all of the students come 
from the middle West. The large, rich 
universities no longer control the Eepublic. 
Our great colleges are largely endowed and 
perhaps over-supplied with luxurious ap- 
pointments. In these institutions the stu- 
dent spends from $1,000 to $5,000 a year. 
His dormitory, built by some rich alumnus, 
cost a half-million, and the man who built 
it would never have done so had he dreamed 
that he was erecting a luxurious intellectual 
sleeping-car. Meanwhile, the little Western 
college also does its work. Now and then an 
89 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Eastern man from a doubtful state like New 
York is nominated for the presidency of the 
Nation, but four times out of five, the nom- 
inee for the presidency has been a graduate 
of a little Western college, and trained 
beyond the Alleghanies. It is a good 
thing to believe in ourselves. Self-depre- 
ciation is no virtue. Contrariwise, egotism 
is a great fault; but one thing is certain, 
the surest corrective to egotism, on the 
part of our notable leaders in things 
material, is a page or two of history, con- 
cerning the place that the home-missionary 
and Western educators have had in rearing 
the great men who have influenced this re- 
public. Here and now, therefore, let us 
remember the Western colleges. Simple 
justice demands our confession of the Na- 
tion's debt to them. Grateful to our in- 
ventors, to our merchants and our railroad- 
builders, we can never forget the debt we owe 
our educators. Among the most useful men 
in the republic are these home-missionaries, 
who have toiled tirelessly to found schools, 
build academies, erect libraries, endow col- 
leges and turn the children of the church 
towards the path that leads to the Temple 
of Wisdom and Knowledge. 
90 



The Institutions of the Republic 

Only recently has the story of the West- 
ern commonwealths been written. And 
how rich are these pages in tales of hero- 
ism ! If Thomas Carlyle were living he 
would now add a new chapter to his '' Hero 
Worship," and if the pulpit ever wears out by 
much preaching the eleventh chapter of He- 
brews, we can find a new roll-call of heroes 
in the record of missions. Nor is there 
any volume on chivalry or knight errantry 
in your libraries that will surpass these 
wondrous volumes. Cynics say that hero- 
ism is dead. The blase rich, living in their 
silken palaces, sneer at tales of heroism 
as forms of cheap martyrdom. Our own 
city abounds in men who have sacrificed 
everything that is admirable in character 
to pile millions innumerable upon other 
millions, and the revelations in the maga- 
zines of the past summer have made us 
all but ashamed of our time, in that wild 
beasts of the jungle have a higher code 
of ethics than these men who have all but 
made the name of man to be a reproach. 
In such an era we find the corrective 
of pessimism, the tonic to braver living, in 
the history of these heroes. 

Open the history of Western Pennsylvania 
91 



The Fortune of the Republic 

and refresh yourself with the story of the 
Moravian, Christian Frederic Post. He was 
the first missionary ever sent over the Alle- 
ghanies, during the time when England and 
France were struggling for the possession of 
this continent. Having served the river 
men on the Ohio, he turned to the Indians 
of the forest. He penetrated to the banks 
of the Wabash ; he taught the Indians how 
to improve their tents, how to increase their 
corn, how to guard against filth-diseases, 
how to keep pure the springs and water- 
brooks, and opened to them the evangel of 
God's love and man's need. After ten 
years he, too, fell a victim to the Indian 
scourge, consumption, and recrossed the Al- 
leghanies, returning home to die. E'ow be- 
cause the English colonists were strong in 
Pennsylvania and were spreading energet- 
ically westward, the French officers at 
Detroit went through the forests, stirring 
up the Indians to war. They told the 
chiefs about the great victory over Brad- 
dock, but a few years before ; they assembled 
some say forty and some say sixty thousand 
Indians, and were preparing to cross the 
mountains and descend upon Central Penn- 
sylvania. In that hour fear journeyed on 
92 



The Institutions of the Repubhc 

the wings of the wind. Pennsylvania was 
in a tumult of alarm. When the news came, 
Christian Post asked his friends to lift him 
upon his horse, and with a friend to lead 
the animal, hurried over the mountains to 
the place where the Indians were assembled. 
One night he came to the camp, where is 
now Beaver. He assembled some three 
hundred chiefs. 

The French leaders were furious^ the 
young braves were set on war; but the 
dying missionary pleaded for peace. To the 
old chief in command. Christian Post ad- 
dressed himself. '* For years I have served 
you. Living in the forest, I have taught 
your children and tended your sick and 
buried your dead. The Great Spirit does 
not want your people to kill my people. 
Let the English and French fight their 
own battles. Will you devastate these 
homes and murder these women and chil- 
dren ? These women are my sisters, these 
children are my children. I am dying. I 
have never asked aught of you. 1 now ask 
the lives of my people." When day broke 
the old chief dissolved the council, and told 
his young braves that there would be no 
war. By noon the Indian army had folded 
93 



The Fortune of the RepubHc 

its tents and " silently stolen away " into 
the forest. The French troops dismantled 
and abandoned Fort Duquesne and returned 
to Canada ; the little village of Pittsburg 
was begun on the ruins of the old fort, and 
the horrors of war had departed forever. 
One missionary saved western Pennsyl- 
vania ; single-handed he defeated an army. 
That achievement is worth all that the 
home-mission movement has cost. 

And yet even Post's achievement has been 
rivalled by William Duncan, who, forty- 
seven years ago, landed among cannibals on 
the wild shores of Alaska, and now look at 
the work he hath wrought. Yonder is the 
industrial village of Metlakahtla. Every 
Indian family in its own frame-house, with 
their cooperative store, their bank, their 
great sawmill, their box-factory, making 
their own tin cans, running a salmon can- 
nery, owning ships, tugs, naphtha launches, 
having a church with an auditorium only 
less striking than this, with Indians that a 
few years ago pounded a medicine-drum 
now playing a pipe-organ and singing the 
great hymns and psalms of the church. 
And this is only one of a string of jewels 
worn by the Angel of Missions in America. 
94 



The Institutions of the Republic 

This work is going on all over the great 
West, on the prairies, and in the ISTorthern 
forests, in the Puget Sound country, and in 
the great mountain States of the far South- 
west. These teachers are college-bred men 
and highly educated. Many of them are 
men of marked ability, and could earn sev- 
eral times their income in other occupations 
as business men. But it is their duty to teach 
the people morals, to keep alive in men the 
sense of justice, to make their school, church 
and home a centre of sweetness and reason- 
ableness and light and the higher manhood. 
Take these men away, and the life of the whole 
community would be threatened. In Living- 
stone's day, Africa was a land of savages, 
with here and there an occasional patch of 
butcher knives and revolvers. And take the 
Christian Church and the little Christian 
school out of many of the mining commun- 
ities of the West, and you have a large tract 
of barbarism, with no civilizing centre save 
the bowie knife, and no spiritual agent except 
the six-shooter. Open the pages of " Black 
Eock " and " The Sky Pilot " and there you 
will get in literary form the exact his- 
tory of hundreds of our home-missionaries. 
The author of " The Sky Pilot " is himself 
95 



The Fortune of the Republic 

a home-missionary, across the line in Canada, 
who wrote his stories in the hope of getting 
money enough to help on his work in the 
little church and the little school that he had 
founded. 

Talk about heroism ! These home-mis- 
sionaries are the true heroes. They are 
fighting against the saloon and the gam- 
bling house and the overthrow of the Sunday. 
They are standing for the home, they are 
strengthening the schools, they are using the 
best day of the week, the soul's library day, 
for the spread of American manhood. They 
are doing foundation work. They are pio- 
neers, blazing their way through the forest. 
They are toiling in poverty, in homesickness, 
and some of them in pain and in heart-break. 
They are men whose very shoe-latches you 
and I are not worthy to stoop down and un- 
loose. One hundred years from now they 
will be looked upon as the Pilgrim Fathers 
of the great West. Matthew Arnold has 
said that America holds the future of the 
world. Mr. Gladstone believed that the 
Mississippi Yalley is to hold the great manu- 
facturing cities of futurity, and that by the 
end of this century the Republic will number 
six hundred millions. Realizing the influ- 

96 



The Institutions of the Republic 

ence of the new settlers and the new in- 
stitutions upon the future of the Eepublic, 
we are trying to do all that we can to lay the 
foundations aright, to hold men back from 
ignorance and passion and sin, and to de- 
velop in them manhood and intelligence and 
virtue. 

Our country is passing through a great 
crisis. Many fear that our institutions are 
going down under the fearful strain. 
Groundless are all such fears. The peril of 
the hour is materialism. Wealth has come 
in like a flood, and wealth is to be yet more 
and more. The money that is now a little 
stream, trickling over the ankles of our chil- 
dren, is to becomeariver,deepenoughtoswim 
in. We now have through machinery sixty 
man-power for every worker. And through 
new electrical devices the new machines are 
to multiply every man to two hundred. 
Also the new intensive farming is doubling 
the output of the fields, the new methods of 
extracting ore is doubling the value of the 
mines. The income of the average family 
that is now $1,000, will soon be $2,000 and 
$3,000. But abundance often injures. Lux- 
ury is a severe test. Shakespeare and the 
greatest age in literature represent an income 
97 



The Fortune of the Republic 

of a hundred dollars a year per family, just 
as Emerson and Whittier and Hawthorne 
and Thoreau lived in what our working-men 
would call poverty, and wrote their books 
upon a daily income much less than any mem- 
ber of any trades union in this country. But 
God wants to give men abundance, to in- 
crease their herds and flocks, to overflow the 
storehouse and barn, and the increase of com- 
forts and conveniences is intended for the in- 
crease of manhood. With wealth there 
ought to come leisure. With leisure there 
should come culture and refinement and 
Christian character. The richest age ought 
to be the most spiritual age. 

The substance of the peach comes from 
the soil, but the blush and perfume and the 
dripping juices come from the invisible ele- 
ments of the air. The basis of national 
prosperity comes from farms and factories 
and comforts and conveniences and houses 
and ships ; but the glory of the nation's life is 
its character and manhood. And these are 
spiritual. The only way to develop the 
civilization on the outside is to develop man- 
hood on the inside. Would you have books ? 
Strengthen the reason. Would you have pic- 
tures? Waken the imagination. Would 
98 



The Institutions of the Republic 

you have laws? Stir the sense of justice. 
Would you have tools ? Rouse the inventive 
faculty. And these truths that appeal to 
reason and to love and conscience and self- 
sacrifice, these stimulants that the preachers 
hold and use are the most powerful stimu- 
lants for the production of a great civiliza- 
tion known to the world. 

This, then, is our task, the keeping alive in 
men's minds the sense of the presence of 
God, the spiritualizing of things that are 
material, the maintenance of the old convic- 
tions of honour and truth and duty and pa- 
triotism. Our fathers founded our institu- 
tions and handed them down to us. Our 
task it is to guard these institutions, to 
use them for the manufacture of manhood 
of a good quality, and to hand them 
forward unimpaired to another generation. 

It is a little thing that we are increased 
in goods if our sons decay. It is of small 
consequence that our towns are crowded 
with stores, and our stores stuffed with 
wares, or that our cargoes overtax the ships, 
if all these things on the outside smother^ 
men, and the character within. We do not 
have to ask the good God for material treas- 
ure. He has already granted that in abun- 
99 

LOfC. 



The Fortune of the Republic 

dance. Kather is it ours to ask Him for 
the strength to dedicate ourselves anew to 
the work that our fathers began. To care 
for the American home, and keep its ideals 
bright ; to care for the church, and spread 
His truth among all new peoples. To care 
for His day, and keep the Sunday as the soul's 
library day and gallery day, and day of 
brooding. To keep alive in men the sense 
of God, and His loving providence, of Christ, 
and His redemptive mercy ; the sense of duty, 
the sense of sin, the sense of sympathy and 
self-sacrifice, and the hope of immortality. 
And so long as we hold the faiths of our 
fathers, cherish their ideals, and spread 
manhood among the people, so long will 
our institutions continue firm as the moun- 
tains and stars, and all the families of the 
earth will look to the Kepublic as their edu- 
cator and teacher in liberty and free insti- 
tutions. 



lOO 



IV 



The Schools of the Republic and the 
Education of Our Rulers 

To the six national holidays of the Re- 
public must be added Commencement Day 
with its emphasis of the higher education. 
Every June witnesses the commencement 
exercises of hundreds of high schools and 
academies, colleges and universities. Every 
June one hundred thousand students re- 
ceive at the hands of college presidents 
the diploma that is the outer sign of the 
inner culture. Because of the people's en- 
thusiasm for education the Commencement 
Day has become one of the high days of the 
soul, a new holiday in the calendar of national 
events. We have it on high authority that 
wisdom is better than rubies. The man who 
uttered that sentiment was not only the wisest 
man of his day ; he was also the Croesus of his 
epoch, and the king of his country. What 
he really means is that knowledge is its own 
exceeding great reward. Doubtless it is true 
that wisdom is worth while for its own sake. 

lOI 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Nevertheless, knowledge is of practical 
worth. It makes for utility. Wealth is not 
in raw material of wood or stone or steel, 
but in the amount of education that the 
workman puts into the material. 

Kovalis once said that " philosophy bakes 
no bread, but gives us God, freedom and im- 
mortality." Having confessed the truth of 
the second half of the statement, it remains 
for us to deny the first. As a matter of fact, 
philosophy bakes all the bread, and when- 
ever the loaf has been burned it has been 
in the absence of "philosophy." Knowl- 
edge opens the furrow and sows the seed ; 
knowledge curves the sickle and reaps the 
sheaf ; knowledge builds the mill, grinds the 
corn and converts it into bread, the staff of 
life. Knowledge touches a forked stick and 
turns it into a steel plow. Knowledge as- 
sembles many bricks and turns them into 
one house, or factory, or hall of science. 
Knowledge is more precious than fine gold, 
because it produces gold, that is of finer 
quality still. Civilization is a texture spun 
of the golden threads of wisdom and knowl- 
edge. 

But when knowledge has enriched the 
home, the town and the city, it lends tran- 

102 



The Schools of the Republic 

quillity to the scholar's heart. " "What has 
been the happiest moment of your life ? " a 
friend asked Horace Bushnell. " I have ex- 
perienced my highest happiness in the mo- 
ments when I have been conscious of pursu- 
ing the truth for its own sake, and of yield- 
ing myself fully to God's truth." To love 
the truth supremely, to pursue the truth 
eternally, to yield one's self to the truth 
completely, to defend the truth persistently 
— this is to receive from God the patent of 
nobility ! 

Close, indeed, the affiliation between the 
state and our schools of learning ! Doubtless, 
the people of the republic are interested in 
education because of certain motives of self- 
interest and self-protection. The monarchy 
does not rest upon the common school. The 
problem of educating the rulers in the old 
nations is very simple. Autocracy repre- 
sents the government by one, and educating 
the rulers means educating the royal family. 
The oligarchy represents government by a 
few ; the education of its rulers means the 
education of the patrician classes. Democ- 
racy means government by the many ; 
the education of our rulers means the edu- 
cation of all the people. When the founders 
103 



The Fortune of the Republic 

of the republic conceived their idea of self- 
government they understood the necessity of 
making every voter a scholar, as well as a 
patriot and a Christian. 

The very thought, however, of making ten 
million voters wise towards political truth, 
social truth, economic truth, staggered the 
people of the Old World. The Tories in 
England shouted " Madmen ! " Carlyle said, 
*' Government by the multitude can never 
succeed until the vote of Judas Iscariot is 
worth as much as the vote of Jesus Christ." 
The English Conservative has always looked 
forward to each new election in our country, 
anticipating the final plunge into the abyss, 
while he murmurs, " After Niagara and the 
whirlpool, what?" Even Macaulay ended 
his long review of history with the con- 
clusion that democracy would break down 
just as soon as the free lands were exhausted. 
Then, he says, will come the military dic- 
tator, who will protect the rich from spoli- 
ation by the poor. 

Well, the cheap lands have long been ex- 
hausted. Our cities are as large as the cities 
of the old monarchies, but our institutions 
have steadily declined to go to pieces. Our 
working-classes are more and more con- 
104 



The Schools of the Republic 

servative, as well as more and more pros- 
perous. If our immigrants when they come 
bring with them the note of anarchy, the 
hatred of all government in the state and of 
all ecclesiasticism in Church, they soon be- 
come patriots and lovers of the republic. 
History tells us that our public schools have 
done their work. The educational system 
of this country has justified itself by manu- 
facturing patriots and citizens of good qual- 
ity. Our teachers have made young men 
and women strong, wise, self-sufiicing ; man- 
hood is the best fruit that the republic can 
exhibit. These schools have taken the chil- 
dren of foreigners and turned them into able 
and useful leaders in the cities and the 
States, and in the National government. 

JS'o patriot who is in close touch with the 
public schools but finds his fear and pessi- 
mism have dissolved like the frost before an 
April sun. Would you strengthen your op- 
timism, your enthusiasm for the schools of 
your country, your hope for the republic ? 
Get in touch with your public school teach- 
ers. Linger for a few days in the atmos- 
phere of the colleges and State universities. 
Soon you will come back with a new confi- 
dence in your country, in its people and in 
105 



The Fortune of the Republic 

the institutions they represent. Verily the 
schools of our country have fitted the people 
to be their own rulers, bringing assurances 
of the permanency of the republic. 

Our schools have another claim upon the 
republic in that the secret of national prog- 
ress is the secret of the higher education. 
The hope of the future is in the ever-increas- 
ing intelligence of the average people. It is 
a singular fact that a great man can be- 
queath his gold to his child, but not his 
treasures of mind and heart. The scholar's 
wisdom dies with him. The inventor car- 
ries to the grave his mastery of matter and 
force. Eloquence dies with the orator. The 
fall of the great jurist is like the fall of 
some cathedral or gallery. Sir William 
Jones mastered eight languages and twenty 
dialects, but his child must go back to the 
point where the father began, and for him- 
self master afresh every truth the father 
learned. At first thought this seems to make 
social progress impossible. It compels the 
human race to return every thirty years to 
the cradle, and begin its progress afresh. 
Herbert Spencer says that acquired charac- 
teristics are transmissible, the German 
scientist, Weismann, denies the statement ; 
1 06 



The Schools of the Republic 

Spencer says that education leaves a little 
dent in each cell, and that the dent passes 
on from father to child ; Weismann insists 
that the father achieves wisdom for himself 
alone, but transmits the traits with which 
he was born. When the scholars disagree, 
how shall the laymen decide ? One rule is 
safe ; when we do not know which side of 
the street to take, we can keep in the mid- 
dle of the road. The common sense view, 
perhaps, is furnished by experience. Leav- 
ing the scientists to JSght out the contro- 
versy, we can affirm that we have seen four 
generations of Darwins, seven of Emersons, 
ten of the Bach family in music, a thousand 
generations of the Hebrews, but if the father 
cannot as a scholar bequeath his knowl- 
edge to the babe, there is something better 
that can be done. You can hand your edu- 
cation over to the child by training, which 
is better than giving it by direct fiat. In- 
deed, it is this that explains the length of 
man's infancy. 

In proportion as man goes towards God, 
he lengthens his childhood. A sand-fly is 
mature in three days, a robin in three 
months, a colt in three years, but man re- 
quires three climacterics of seven years each. 
107 



The Fortune of the Republic 

This long epoch of childhood and growth in- 
volved in twenty-one years makes it possible 
for society to hand over to the growing soul 
all the treasures accumulated in three 
thousand years. Civilization is a museum, 
holding tools, books, arts, laws, industries. 
The child is a traveller that lingers for 
twenty-one years in the museum. Slowly it 
walks through this treasure-house, familiar- 
izing itself with these great achievements. 
So plastic is the mind of youth that a single 
week avails for reading and fixing in mind 
forever the book of the old blind poet, who 
spent seventy years upon that Iliad. In four 
years, perhaps, a youth with a hungry mind 
can sit at the feet of two hundred masters ; 
these, also, will be the mountain-peak minds. 
In telling him their story, they have told 
him the full epic of man's soul. But this 
plasticity of childhood, this long infancy of 
twenty-one years, that makes it possible to 
educate the youth and hand over to him so 
many of the treasures of the family of 
man achieved through three thousand years, 
represents a great responsibility for parents 
and teachers. The relations between edu- 
cation and wealth ask us to emphasize 
the value of our schools. Experience tells 
io8 



The Schools of the Republic 

us that ignorance is the great waster. It 
was ignorance of the simple principles of 
sanitation that brought pestilence upon our 
forefathers. In their ignorance, our an- 
cestors believed in rain-makers. Grievous 
were the losses of yesterday through old 
medicines, old tools, old astrologies, old 
superstition, and all these losses came 
through ignorance. Wisdom hath built a 
new world. 

This is the great lesson of slavery. Look- 
ing backwards we now see that the South be- 
fore the war was getting poorer and poorer, 
while the North was growing richer and 
richer. The reason is very simple. Slavery 
was slowly starving the South to death. 
Slave-labour represents ignorant labour. 
The slave wants no newspaper nor books, and 
that ignorance starved the press. The slave 
needs only one coat, and that ignorance 
starved the loom and factory. The slave 
wants no sewing-machine, no cottage-organ, 
no comforts or conveniences, and this 
starved the manufacturing-towns. The mas- 
ters represented a handful and they were 
good buyers, but the slaves represented a 
multitude, and they were poor buyers. And 
so the South grew poorer and poorer, and 
109 



The Fortune of the Republic 

emerged from the war a mere wreck, and 
shell, ruined by the ignorance of millions of 
slaves. But the North came out of the war 
richer than when it went into battle. Free 
labour is educated labour. 

Our workmen were good buyers; they 
hungered for books and supported the 
presses. The eye hungered for beauty ; 
friendship hungered for hospitality, the work- 
man wanted a hundred comforts for his 
children ; every new knowledge developed a 
new need ; and the people grew by leaps and 
bounds. It was given to Rudyard Kipling 
to take a goosequill and a farthing's worth 
of paper and ink, and to sell the hieroglyph, 
which he named " The Eecessional " to the 
London Times for £400. The raw ma- 
terial represented a penny ; all the rest of the 
$2,000 represented education and training, 
— without which, in some form, even genius 
is helpless. If by divine fiat to-morrow you 
could quadruple the education and intelli- 
gence of the eighty millions of people in this 
country, you would multiply by ten the 
wealth of the republic. Recently I was in 
the Patent Ofiice in Washington, looking at 
the tools. Three out of four of the new 
tools are not yet practical. The people are 



The Schools of the Republic 

not yet ready for them. As yet the work- 
men are too careless to handle the exquis- 
itely fine tools and costly material. But we 
shall soon double the intelligence of the 
nation, and then all these inventions will 
come in, to increase the comfort and the 
happiness of the people. Wisdom is not only 
better than rubies, but it can now manu- 
facture a thousand coins of gold. Igno- 
rance can turn Carthage into a heap, and 
make New York a ruin, but knowledge can 
cover the desert lands of Idaho and Colorado 
and Nevada with houses and gardens by 
leading streams of water across the thirsty 
plains. Yerily there is a cave of diamonds 
and an Aladdin's lamp. Knowledge finds 
the path to the cave and treasure-house, and 
wisdom holds the key. Therefore, with all 
thy getting get wisdom, and with all thy 
having have knowledge. 

In this era of universal comfort and con- 
venience, of arts and sciences and liberties, 
when all the highways that lead to happiness 
are open unto all feet, we must not forget 
that civilization is a storehouse, filled with 
treasure, accumulated by scholars — scholars, 
sometimes literary, but also scholars prac- 
tical, working in wood or stone, or steel. 
Ill 



The Fortune of the RepubHc 

Great are those words religion, culture, art, 
beauty, but each word stands for a place 
where a scholar achieved some form of 
excellence. The old poets would have us 
think that all the good things of life are the 
gifts of the gods. Thus, Prometheus gave 
fire, Yulcan the sword, Apollo eloquence and 
music. J^evertheless, the gods gave nothing, 
and man achieved everything— under his heav- 
enly Father's guidance and blessing. Thus a 
great tool means that the inventor has 
found out the last fact in the case. Thou- 
sands of years ago a savage stood in the 
forest, looking at the soil. Growing wise 
towards the tree, he cut a forked stick ; 
growing wise towards the bullock, he asked 
the ox to pull his rude plow. Grown wise 
towards the wild rice, he sowed his first 
crop of wheat and filled a granary, and 
now, all these grains and fruits and steel 
plows and steam-threshers represent new 
achievements of wisdom and knowledge. 
The time was when the forest child stood 
beside a river, to whose swift current he 
was not equal. Grown wise towards the 
tree, the savage bound many logs together 
and made a raft. Grown wise towards fire, 
he burned out the hollow log, and achieved 

112 



The Schools of the Republic 

the swift canoe. Grown wise towards the 
wind, the breezes filled all his sails. Adding 
other forms of wisdom, at last he achieved 
an ocean steamer, with commerce for every 
clime. 

It is wisdom, therefore, that measures 
man's progress. Palissy looks at a lump 
of mud, and wisdom turns it into a 
china plate. That early musician looked at 
the sea-shell, and fastening a few strings 
across the mouth he made it a harp. Yester- 
day, a man took a tin vessel filled with elec- 
tric fluid (as it were) and climbing into a 
motor car, made the hidden energy carry 
him twenty miles into the country and back 
again. What foods knowledge hath found 
out ! What soft raiment it hath woven ! 
What temples and architecture it hath con- 
structed ! What mountains of knowledge 
hath it not levelled ! What seas hath it not 
crossed ! Indeed, man seems rapidly ap- 
proaching the era when every hidden force 
in land or sea or sky will perfectly obey 
his will; when the lightnings on Pike's 
Peak will drive trains to the east and hurl 
cars to the west ; when a little electricity, 
whose vibration began on the Yalu, which 
in the early days of the Russo-Japanese 
"3 



The Fortune of the Republic 

war was crossed thirty times by the minds 
of correspondents, and then was crossed by an 
army, will at this end report itself in a picture 
of the river, and the army going down into 
the water. For God hath placed all things 
in His universe under "man's very feet," 
not to mention man's reason. For all the 
fruits upon which society feeds have been 
ripened upon the boughs of the tree of 
knowledge, planted by parents and nurtured 
by teachers. 

The school has another claim, in that edu- 
cation is the first factor in human progress. 
What the astronomer sees depends upon his 
lenses. If the lens is small, he sees a few 
stars ; if the lens is powerful, the flakes of 
light break up into vast cosmic systems. 
Culture is not simply a familiarity with the 
best that has been done and thought and 
said. It is the power, also, to perfectly en- 
joy and use all the forces of land, or sea, or 
sky. It is said that man has five senses ; 
what we ought to say is that man may have 
^ve senses. Some have eyes, but in all the 
wondrous beauty of a June day see nothing ; 
some have ears, but separate no sounds in 
the vocal and melodious June morn. We 
are told that sleep is the sister of Death, but 
114 



The Schools of the Republic 

Death has another relative — named Igno- 
rance. Education is twin brother to life- 
The ignorant man enters the earthly scene 
and calls it a wilderness. Then comes the 
scholar. He beholds the mountain, and it 
becomes an altar. The smoking clouds turn 
to rising prayers : where had been winds, is 
now the going of God in the tree-tops, and 
the birds become choirs. Each fluted blade 
of grass tells the story of God's loving care. 
Each tiny bird that cannot fall without his 
Father's notice reminds him that the soul is 
dear unto God. 

The whole scene to him is rich and 
full of poetry. What had been a wilder- 
ness to a serf becomes a glorious landscape, 
covered with the emblazonry of God. Out 
of such considerations the commencement 
season assumes new importance. Education 
becomes a broad word, in which the college 
has only a partial place. Indeed, college 
men are pioneers, blazing the pathway and 
making ready for the great host that crowds 
hard after. God has so constituted the world 
that life itself with work and love and death, 
are teachers. Instruction is one part, but 
awakening and inspiration is the other part. 
The intellect is a loom that weaves the rich 
115 



The Fortune of the Republic 

cloth of poetry and philosophy ; but the mind 
is not simply a loom that weaves ; it is also 
an engine that runs. The great emotions 
and the inspirations, therefore, have a large 
place in education. That is why Kobert 
Burns, who never entered a college, is a 
scholar, just as truly as Wordsworth. That 
is why the rail-splitter, Abraham Lincoln, 
surpasses Edward Everett, the polished 
classic student. When any human being 
possesses a soul whose windows are open on 
every side, so that all truth, all beauty, all 
goodness, come rushing in to enrich the 
house of man's soul, that man is educated, 
whether he has been trained by college or is 
self-trained. 

One supreme claim the public schools 
have upon us all. Their aim is to secure in- 
dividual excellence, and to promote self- 
sufficing power in each youth and maiden. 
It is true that enemies of the schools affirm 
that the common school is unfriendly to 
greatness. It is said that our people are 
being reduced to a dead level ; that all are 
being ground through the same mill ; that 
nature works towards difference and variety ; 
that the common school works towards 
sameness. It is said that great men are now 
ii6 



The Schools of the Republic 

disappearing from our country, in that all 
men are as much alike as eighty million 
peas, picked from as many pods. But 
nothing is risked when we affirm that there 
are more great individuals than ever before. 
Absolute greatness has wonderfully in- 
creased; comparative greatness may have 
diminished. When there are only one or 
two men of a generation who have leisure 
to think, the great man stands out. Pliny 
was all but worshipped for his genius ; yet 
Pliny the naturalist tells us that a chameleon 
attracts birds and that if you burn a chame- 
leon on red hot coals it attracts thunder- 
storms. Now, it is very easy to be a genius 
when everybody else is a fool. Much of 
what is called the era of great men is based 
upon the paucity of wisdom among the 
masses, among whom a comparatively 
strong man stands forth a colossal figure. 
In a desert, where there are many blades of 
grass under the shadow of a rock, the 
solitary palm tree looms up very large. 
But that palm tree would look very small 
planted in a forest of northern pines, three 
thousand miles wide. Because the schools 
are making all the people great, the occa- 
sional great man is seemingly passing. But, 
117 



The Fortune of the Republic 

strictly speaking, our schools were never so 
strong, our teachers never so wise, our chil- 
dren never making so rapid progress, our 
institutions never so useful. Our earth is a 
field in which to grow men. Manhood and 
womanhood are its richest flowers and 
fruits. These seasons that come and go are 
not for the filling of granaries alone, but for 
the enrichment of souls. 

Who, therefore, shall properly recognize 
the nation's debt to its teachers? These 
are the true builders of the state. No words 
can over-praise them. Multitudes of these 
men and women are uncanonized saints. 
Here on earth their place seems small, but 
God's angels have a niche for them in 
heaven. The city makes much of the in- 
fluence of the great banker and manufac- 
turer, but what if the teacher, who educates 
two generations of business men, should 
say : " I trained this jurist, his laws are 
mine ; this author, mine his pages ; this 
artist, mine is the song, the canvas." Be- 
cause truth never dies, these educators are 
immortal. The scientists tell us that a 
milligram of musk lasts through radiation 
for seven thousand years, and a milligram 
of radium eleven times as long. But is not 
ii8 



The Schools of the Republic 

truth more lasting than perfume or matter ? 
Truth never dies, its errand never fails, its 
end is always victory. Here the teachers 
may be obscure ; there they shine as the 
brightness of the firmament. They are our 
Theban band, protecting our liberties. Our 
educators are our leaders, guiding the pil- 
grim host out of the wilderness into the 
Promised Land. 



119 



Individual Excellence, the Secret 
of National Progress 

The genius of the Eepublic is individual 
excellence. The aim of our institutions is 
self-sufficing manhood. 

Every youth is to bear his own burden, 
practice self-reliance, independence and 
courage. Every worker is to eat his own 
bread in the sweat of his own brow. Let 
the scholar distill his wise thoughts in 
the alembic of his own brain; let the 
martyr fill the cup of sacrifice with the 
crimson of his own broken heart. There 
is no easy road to greatness. There is 
a royal road to character and self-suffic- 
ing manhood; Make the most possible of 
yourself ! Would you have a great nation ? 
Let each individual make himself wise, 
strong and self-sufficing. Would you have 
a weak state ? Let the people cling to 
the garments of their legislators as little 
children cling to the skirts of their mothers 
— for giants you will soon have feeblings. 

120 



Individual Excellence 

The test of every institution is, Does it pro- 
mote the greatness of the individual ? Who 
is the Christian ? An individual who has 
carried his thought and life up to the like- 
ness of Christ and become one of the sons 
of God for greatness. What is the church ? 
A group of these great individuals, unique 
in their personal excellence. What is the 
secret of strength ? Let every man bear 
his own burden, and by exercise gather 
strength to bear the burden of others. 
Would any youth become an original poet, 
let him stay at home with his own soul and 
sail the seas with God alone. Would any 
man be universally beloved, let him bear 
his own burdens, consume his own smoke, 
and thus will he gather strength and bear 
the burdens of others. 

Of course this insistence upon individual 
excellence rebukes our independent genera- 
tion, falling on us like whips on naked 
shoulders. Our soft and luxurious age 
wishes to escape personal responsibility. It 
traces all troubles back to institutions on 
the outside, instead of to individuals on the 
inside. Is the youth a truant, hating his 
books ? Blame the teacher and the school- 
administration,— everybody excepting the 

121 



The Fortune of the Republic 

youth himself, who will not feed his love of 
learning. Is a man a drunkard, a tramp, 
a vagabond ? Blame competition, corpora- 
tions, anybody excepting the individual 
who loves idleness and hates work. Are 
there multitudes to-day in concert rooms, 
in dance halls, at their sports, instead of in 
churches? Blame the Church — some be- 
cause the sermons are too long or too deep 
or too shallow ; blame anybody excepting 
the individual who has no noble discontent 
and hunger for a higher life. Is one youth 
industrious, thrifty and economical, so that 
he begins to climb up the golden ladder of 
success, while another is fickle and change- 
able ? Blame the wage-system or the tariff, 
anything; only do not reform the in- 
dividual ! If the man himself is sick with 
some economic ill, instead of giving the 
remedy to the man, take the dose of 
medicine to our State capitols and give it to 
the legislators vicariously. In this time, 
when all men avoid personal responsibility 
and blame the laws instead of themselves, 
we must be grateful that God neither 
slumbers nor sleeps, else there would be 
small hope that our pilgrim band will ever 
come out of the wilderness into the promised 

122 



Individual Excellence 

land of wisdom and happiness. Meanwhile 
here is this Book that stands for individual 
excellence, saying : To every man his work ; 
every man shall give an account of himself • 
let every man bear his own burden. 

JSTow this theory of individual excellence 
draws deeply into life, and must vindicate 
Itself before the bar of reason. History is 
a stern judge. She tests every theory. She 
sends the unsound principles to the left and 
the sound ones to the right. What has his- 
tory to say about individual excellence as 
the spring of national greatness ? Civiliza- 
tion has always had its origin among little 
lands and little peoples. Little Palestine 
gives us religion; little Greece gives us 
poetry, eloquence and philosophy; little 
Italy gives us law and government ; little 
Switzerland gives us international postal 
system, international weights and measures, 
international law and the international Eed 
Cross movement ; little Holland makes her 
great contribution to modern democracy. 
But by way of preeminence each of these 
races stands for the principle of individual 
excellence. In the providence of God, the 
Jewish people were shut in by the deserts 
on the north, south and east and the sea on 



12 



The Fortune of the Republic 

the west. There they fashioned their own 
laws, grew their own social and domestic 
institutions, reared their own prophets, poets 
and judges ; there the Saviour of the world 
touched the earth at Bethlehem, and as 
waters sometimes pile up until at length 
they break through all obstructions and 
sweep out through all the land, so at last 
the flood divine burst its barriers, and this 
command was sounded forth : " Go ye into 
all the world and preach the evangel unto 
all nations." Little Greece, too, was shut 
in between the mountains and the sea, until 
she developed sweetness and light in her 
sons and daughters, just as the Swiss were 
shut in within the mountain- walls for cen- 
turies until they perfected their great mes- 
sage. And what shall we say of Scotland 
and England, save that they are isolated 
lands — people that remained apart until 
they developed great individual value ? Our 
own forefathers also were shut up and apart, 
while they developed their free institutions, 
until the day came when the New England 
spirit journeyed forth to shape the Western 
Keserve, then to cover the Mississippi Yal- 
ley with the institutions that represent the 
higher education, until finally the New Eng- 
124 



Individual Excellence 

land spirit, moving into the South, came 
into collision with slavery and ground that 
iniquity to powder. Not one of the great 
nations of the world but represents a long 
interval of providential training, culture and 
personal development, until its great men 
march in squads and regiments. 

And what is true of the nations is true of 
all great institutions. There is no notable 
tool, no shop, no factory, no law, no art, no 
science, no constitution that does not rep- 
resent a great individual from whom it 
took its rise. If we journey backward to- 
wards the beginning of the steam-engine we 
come at last to a studious individual named 
"Watt. If we seek for the beginning of the 
theory of gravitation we go back to a 
scholarly individual named Newton. If we 
seek for the beginning of the drama and 
oratorio, we go back to a world-poet named 
Shakespeare, and a gifted musician named 
Handel. Every river that bears upon its 
bosom fleets of war and business must be 
traced back to a spring on the mountainside, 
and every great institution seems to flow 
down out of the soul of man. If we go back 
and seek out the beginning of this evangel, 
of peace on earth and good will towards men, 
125 



The Fortune of the Republic 

we come at last to a great Teacher upon 
His cross, with arms flung wide to lift the 
earth back to His Father's side, for religion 
itself, in its final, universal adaptation, 
sets forth from a great Saviour. And 
how shall we account for this universe, with 
its suns and stars and procession of the sea- 
sons, save as we trace it back to the mind 
of the great God, from whose right hand of 
omnipotence suns and stars fly forth like 
sparks under the stroke of the smith's ham- 
mer ? If history or experience tell us any- 
thing it is that everything in the career of 
nations and men fully justifies Paul's theory 
that individual excellence is the secret of 
national happiness and social progress. 

But this emphasis of personal work re- 
ceives its final form in Christ's estimate of 
the individual. JS'o other teacher exhibits 
such enthusiasm for man. Other moralists 
have talked man down. Christ talks him 
up. Others have despised man because of 
external circumstances — just as if bloody 
Herod had weight of manhood because he 
wore purple and lived in a silken palace ; 
just as if Paul had no personal worth be- 
cause he wore plain clothes while he was 
meditating his ode to love. Some moralists 
126 



Individual Excellence 

despise man because of bis poverty. Just 
as if wicked Dives was praise wortby because 
be bad gold in bis coffer, or as if Emerson 
and Wbittier bad no social standing because 
tbey did tbeir best work on an income of 
$600 per year. Horace looks witb contempt 
upon certain men because tbey v^^ere igno- 
rant, and praises otbers because tbey were 
wise; Eobert Burns at eigbteen was ig- 
norant, and Eobert Burns at tbirty-six was 
wise: but tbe essential genius of Eobert 
Burns existed during bis unscbooled days 
as truly as in tbose days wben be was tbe 
idol of Edinburgb drawing rooms. Cbrist 
ignored external conditions. He stripped 
away tbe rags from the beggar and tbe pur- 
ple from tbe prince, and laid His band upon 
tbe soul and wbispered, " Made in tbe image 
of God." It was impossible for Him to 
paint in colours too ricb tbe destinies of one 
in God's image, wbo carried two eternities 
in tbe beart. 'Nor was any man so bumble 
in bis talent or obscure in his task as to es- 
cape Christ's notice. "To every man his 
work," said Cbrist, giving to all tbe poets 
their thought that be who does tbe humblest 
thing well in God's sight makes the task 
easy and duty all divine. 

127 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Has any man been despoiled by passion 
until sin has swept through his life like a 
fire sweeping through a city , or as a cyclone 
sweeps through the land, leaving only 
ruined houses and gardens? Jesus Christ 
has an instant remedy, but it is the remedy 
for the individual—" Ye may be born again." 
The wild grape may have a new infusion of 
a large, sweet flow of sap that will trans- 
form its acid into the sweetness of the Con- 
cord ; the wild rose may be fed at the bot- 
tom and grafted at the top until it becomes 
a rose double, of every colour and every 
perfume ; the wild rice may be born again 
and become the Fife wheat. If in the 
vegetable world there may be such strange 
increment of life and power, who shall 
say that in the world of morals and mind 
man may not find a new power coming 
from beyond himself, and so recover man- 
hood and achieve weight of character ? In 
a word, Christ's philosophy of life, not less 
than Paul's, is the philosophy of individ- 
ual excellence — that is, the spring of social 
happiness and progress. 

Now for some reason, multitudes dis- 
believe in this emphasis of the individual 
as the golden mean. Out of two extremes 
128 



Individual Excellence 

stand two widely separated theories — the 
one the theory of egoism, the other the 
theory of socialism ; midway between lies 
this golden mean, named individual worth. 
To day society swings towards that Scylla 
of egoism that is the apotheosis of selfish- 
ness ; then it straightway turns and flings 
itself towards the Chary bdis of socialism at 
the other extreme. The philosophy of the 
selfish egoist is, every fellow for himself and 
the devil take the hindmost ; the philosophy 
of socialism is, society is everything and the 
individual will is nothing. Egoism makes 
too little of society ; socialism makes too 
little of the individual. Egoism is the 
Dead Sea into which all streams run ; at 
last, always getting and never giving, it 
finally becomes a putrid pool. At the 
other extreme stands socialism, making 
the individual a mere drop in a river, 
a mere leaf in a forest, a mere cog in 
a great labour-machine, a mere grain of 
sand lost on an infinite shore. 

But midway between the two extremes is 
this golden mean that includes all that is 
best in both theories. In nature there is a 
centripetal force that wants everything for 
itself, and is always in danger of pulling the 
129 



The Fortune of the Republic 

earth into the sun for the destruction of 
both ; there is the centrifugal force that 
leads the earth to fly away from the sun 
and come into immediate touch with the 
other planets, which means a collision in- 
stead of a union ; and there is the golden 
mean that moves in its own orbit, becomes 
a solid earth with pastures, and harvests, 
towns and cities. Now these words, *' Let 
every man bear his own burden," ask the 
man to love his fellows and his God, and 
by avoiding that false egoism, on the one 
hand, and that false socialism on the other, 
to become a great individual, gathering 
wisdom and goodness as he goes forward. 
Because we believe in the poor, because we 
love the weak, because my heart is knit in 
with my kind through sympathy, because I 
want to see the individual achieve happi- 
ness and personal culture and personal 
weight of manhood, I do not believe in 
either egoism on the one hand, or socialism 
on the other. " To every man his work ; let 
every man bear his own burden." 

These are nature's laws, and they cannot 

be abrogated, neither by the Commune in 

Paris nor by the city council in our own land. 

History tells of Kigault, who in 1871 was 

130 



Individual Excellence 

at the head of the Communists when, in an 
attempt to seize property and divide it 
equally, corpses were piled like cord wood in 
the streets of Paris. When a bishop was 
brought before Rigault, he said, " Who are 
you?" "A servant of God," answered 
the bishop, whose deeds of mercy had been 
familiar to Paris for nearly a century. 
"God? God? Where does He live?" 
said E-igault. " He lives everywhere," an- 
swered the old bishop. " Very well," said 
Eigault, turning to his officers, "put this 
old man in jail and send out and arrest 
one God, who lives everywhere." But, so 
long as the infinite God lives, neither the 
egoism that asks everything for itself nor 
the socialism that says nothing for the 
individual can succeed. What a tribute 
to individualism is this, that God should 
endow a soul with full power to say : " I 
think, I pray, I sing, I love, I repent, I die," 
and who makes all His laws bow down 
before the individual, as the sheaves of his 
brethren bowed before the sheaf of Joseph. 
There is but one great thing in our world — 
man ; and there is but one great thing in 
man — his individual will. 
In this plea for individual excellence, we 
131 



The Fortune of the Republic 

have the key of all problems, the solution 
of all vexed questions, the clew of every 
maze. Individual worth will give us, for 
example, the secret of an increasing wage. 
We all want to double the earnings of the 
people. How shall we do this ? By laws 
shortening the hours, and limiting the out- 
put ? By legislative enactments ? No : by 
undertaking as individuals to double the 
quality and quantity of our work. Over 
in Kome is a block of stone. It was carved 
by the hand of an old Greek. When 
Michael Angelo was overtaken with blind- 
ness, he comforted himself by going daily 
to the room where was the Torso. There 
the grand old man would put his hands 
upon the marble, and feel the fine surface, 
while the solar light passed over his face. 
Lifting his eyes towards heaven, he would 
smile, even while his lips moved softly 
in prayer to the God of infinite beauty. 
But what is this stone ? The sculptured 
trunk of a man's body — wonderful in its 
anatomical perfection. The head is gone ; 
so are the arms and hands ; and it is without 
feet. You can buy as large a piece of 
marble from the quarries of Ferrera for one 
lira ; and yet Italy would not give up that 
132 



Individual Excellence 

piece of marble for a king's ransom. It 
seems that a great individual put bis tbougbt 
into tbe marble, and made it think for him. 
Personal excellence in the man whose hand 
held the chisel lent value to marble that was 
valueless. Wealth is not in the raw mate- 
rial named marble, nor in wood, nor in steel, 
but in the amount of soul that is put into 
the raw material. 

In London there is a bookshop called 
Quarritch's. There old, rare books, first 
editions, are sold. The other day a little 
piece of faded blue paper was put up for 
sale, — a tiny sheet ; you can buy twenty- 
four sheets like it for five cents. Yet that 
single sheet was sold at Quarritch's for 
over $2,700. Now, what was it that lent 
a value of $2,700 to the sheet of paper 
that cost a cent ? A great man put his 
soul upon the paper and gave it value. 
One day a field-daisy came to Kobert 
Burns and besought him to bless it with 
immortality of sweet song, and the plow- 
boy, who had been musing and dreaming 
and admiring, at length in an ecstasy of 
prayer fell upon his knees in the moist fur- 
row and baptized the wee, crimson-tipped 
blossom ; and now the little sheet of paper 
^33 



The Fortune of the Republic 

on which he wrote his thought has a great 
value because an individual put his great 
soul into that work. 

Now and then man arises to say that la- 
bour creates all wealth ; that all the prop- 
erty in American society was created by 
labour ; that capital has wrested away la- 
bour's all, and that strong men and corpo- 
rations have despoiled labour of her own. 
In one of the new books on political econ- 
omy one reads these words : " Every 
dollar of the ten billions of the product 
of this country last year was created by 
labour, and four dollars out of every five 
that labour created was stolen from it." 

Now, test the statement. Years ago the 
men in the gas-plant of New York City 
from coal extracted the vapour for light ; the 
residuum was tar — of no known value, and 
they carried it out to the Jersey City flats 
and threw it away as waste. One day a 
poor young man, looking eagerly for work 
and position, chanced to see the teamsters 
carting away this tar. He lingered for 
weeks about this black flood. At last he 
worked out a plan of using the waste tar in 
conjunction with pebbles for roofing. He 
also found there a large number of idle men 
134 



Individual Excellence 

who had no work and no wage whatever. 
They were impotent to find work for them- 
selves. Organizing his idea, he led these 
men out to this waste material, showed them 
how to dig it up, transform it into roofing, 
gave these labourers, who had nothing to do, 
work, out of the waste, making a wage for 
them, while he himself made a fortune. 
Now, take away that man's intelligence. 
You have the tar on the Jersey flats ; you 
have the idle workmen with no wage what- 
ever. Who created the industry ? That 
thinking man ! Who gave work to idleness ? 
That inventor ! Who gave them plenty in- 
stead of starvation ? The employer ! And 
what is his reward ? This — that he is now 
told his fortune represents theft; that his 
workmen created all his property, as well 
as theirs ; that he is a vampire, a parasite, 
who wrested his savings from the men 
who produced it. Is this fair ? Is it honest ? 
Is this the reward we give to our inven- 
tors and benefactors, whose organizing 
ability represents the very life of the great 
nation ? 

Over in Eussia, to recall Mallock's history, 
a hundred men were one day at work. 
They were digging a cellar and laying walls 
135 



The Fortune of the RepubUc 

of stone. At last the structure was com- 
pleted. One day the Czar drove along. 
Suddenly the cellar exploded and a gen- 
eral was killed. Now, what the hundred 
workmen built was a cellar, for they knew 
nothing of what was going on. What the 
superintendent, guiding the work, built was 
a mine filled with explosives for slaying a 
Czar. It seems then that work derives all 
its effectiveness from the organizer. 

But the work of a great German musician 
furnishes us with a better illustration. Here 
are a hundred men out on the green. They 
are shouting, laughing, pouring forth the 
exuberance of animal spirit ; but the sound 
has no continuity of tone — no melody — no 
harmony ; we call it noise. Then, at a given 
signal, they leave the park and pass into the 
auditorium. All stand expectant ; now a 
man lifts his baton and suddenly one golden 
flood of music leaps forth immortal. Where 
was sound before, now there is a symphony. 
What changed the bellowing of a hundred 
people into the glory of the "Hallelujah 
Chorus " ? The genius of a single presiding 
intellect. 

Say what you will, God raises up one 
great lawgiver or statesman in a century and 
136 



Individual Excellence 

lifts all others to his level during the next 
century. He raises up a great poet, a great 
inventor, a great merchant, a great railway- 
builder, and these men are our benefactors. 
Take them away, and we should be helpless 
for guidance. It is cruelly unfair and un- 
righteous to pour out upon them all manner 
of scorn. And yet of late the very skies 
seem to have rained lies and slanders upon 
some of the noblest merchants and manufac- 
turers that this country has ever produced ; 
leaders who have planned enterprises that 
have furnished work to innumerable multi- 
tudes, who otherwise would have been im- 
potent for guidance. This principle is the 
more important in these days, when certain 
communistic papers are stirring up class 
hatred and class enmity and preparing us 
for a series of strikes, which may in a crit- 
ical moment create a panic that will in a 
year close factories and turn the plenty into 
poverty — abundance into a desert. 

In the long run there is no way to in- 
crease the wage, save as we increase the in- 
telligence. At will, we can double our 
wages, as a nation. The method is simple 
— double the quantity and quality of the 
work we do. We are investing the hand in 
137 



The Fortune of the Republic 

the spade, when we ought to invest the 
brain. A hand and a spade earn a dollar a 
day. A little intellect and a spade earn 
$1.50 a day. In Philadelphia a blacksmith 
in the locomotive works who has ability and 
puts his intellect into a roller and trip-ham- 
mer earns $20 a day. He rides to his work 
in his own carriage. Laws increase your 
wages? It will take twenty years to bring 
about your pet reform. It is too long to 
wait. Therefore, rely on yourself. Go 
early, stay late, give your nights to study, 
climb, make yourself indispensable, save the 
waste ; then there is nothing you cannot 
hope for. The difference between men is 
not inequality of laws, so much as it is in- 
equality of personal worth I 

We have here also the secret of progress 
for this state. Society is an assembly of in- 
dividuals. Unless all citizens are great, how 
can the state be great ? Stanley's pigmies 
were small, scarcely more than four feet. If 
100,000,000 pigmies were placed in a row, 
would they become giants ? Here is one 
Shetland pony that can trot a mile in ten 
minutes. By putting a hundred Shetland 
ponies side by side, do you think they can 
compass the mile in two minutes ? Here is 



Individual Excellence 

a man who cannot distinguish between the 
Doxology and the tune of " America." Do 
you think a thousand men like him, stand- 
ing side by side, would make a great chorus ? 
To have a great state, you must assemble 
many great individuals. If the individual 
citizen is ignorant, if he is morally as illit- 
erate as the cattle in the stockyards, if he 
feels that he has no stake in this country, 
if he exclaims, as a man down in Pennsyl- 
vania did the other day, in broken English, 
when one was speaking to a crowd on the 
streets, about Washington and Lincoln : 
" Oh, damn Lincoln. What has he done for 
us f " then, no increase of these citizens to 
100,000,000 will make America a great na- 
tion. 

Kecently the editor of a certain news- 
paper in a Massachusetts factory town, pub- 
lished a double-leaded editorial. He sent it 
out as a note of warning and alarm to the 
community. He went on to say that the 
rowdyism on the streets, the vulgarity, the 
profanity, the irreverence, the dare-devil 
spirit had become a matter of public con- 
cern ; that the civilization of the entire com- 
munity was threatened ; he made a plea for 
the best citizens to go on the streets in the 
139 



The Fortune of the Republic 

hours when the multitudes were pouring 
from the factories, and help create an at- 
mosphere of respectability, and ended by 
saying that while he was not a religious 
man, he saw no hope save in a revival of 
interest in ethics, in righteousness, the Ten 
Commandments and religion, until the peo- 
ple had reverence at least towards God, if 
not towards their government or their 
country. 

Eecently a scholar went for a day into a 
mining camp in Pennsylvania. Finding the 
superintendent of the schools, he asked 
about how many miners' families sent their 
children to school during September with- 
out shoes on their feet. It seemed that 
during a single month there came to the 
school board approximately a hundred 
miners, asking that their bo^^s under thir- 
teen years of age might go to work in the 
breakers. One miner had been before the 
board on "Wednesday night. He was half 
drunk at the time. The superintendent 
told the school board that the boy was 
nearly fourteen; that he could not read 
in the second reader ; that he could not 
write ; that the father had for two years 
earned $3 a day, and that he spent his after 
140 



Individual Excellence 

noons and evenings in the saloon, scarcely 
ever bringing any of the wage home. As 
the father had persistently broken the State 
law regarding compulsory education for boys 
under thirteen, the school board sent the 
father to jail on Thursday morning for 
thirty days and took the boy from the 
breakers and put him in school, in accord- 
ance with the laws of Pennsylvania. Care- 
ful investigation showed that nearly every 
one of the ninety-five miners who had 
asked that their children be taken out of 
school and put in the breakers were found 
to be habitual drunkards, who worked to 
feed their passions. Can we rear a great 
state out of such material ? Did Abraham 
Lincoln have to make his mark when he 
signed a document ? Was George Washing- 
ton at fourteen years of age unable to read 
in the second reader ? Can you mention 
any man who helped lay the foundations 
of this country who was not a scholar as 
well as a patriot and a Christian ? Was 
there ever a land whose institutions were 
better calculated to grow strong men than 
ours ? Misguided leaders and ignorant fol- 
lowers want " equality." But there are 
two ways of securing equality. One is to 
141 



The Fortune of the Republic 

run a mowing-machine along and cut off the 
heads of the stronger, taller men and re- 
duce them to the level of the lowest individ- 
ual. Another way is to lift up the lowest 
to the level of the strongest, wisest and 
greatest man in the community. The 
free school and press and church and 
God level men up. They lift the lowest to 
the side of the best. Does the organization 
help each and every workman to make the 
most possible of himself, or does it limit, 
dwarf and repress him ? In so far as it in- 
jures the individual and represses his man- 
hood it is doomed. 

We have here also the principle that will 
test every new theory of reform. The 
young men will find all manner of schemes 
and patent panaceas for saving the nation. 
There is one infallible test by which you 
may judge them. Do they promote indi- 
vidual excellence ? Is their tendency to 
strengthen individual liberty and individual 
self-reliance ? Do they make the citizen 
equal to his own emergency, or do they 
support him by laws and stays and props ? 

Yet even some of the great religious 
journals in this country have said that they 
believe Socialism is coming, that it is irre- 
142 



Individual Excellence 

sistible, and that it ought no longer to be 
resisted. They tell us that the property 
must either be in the hands of the plutocracy 
or the democracy, and that they favour the 
democracy. We all favour wealth in the 
hands of democracy ; but we must all confess 
that nothing cuts the nerve of enterprise like 
uncertainty as to the result of one's work. 
Once a man gets the idea that if he sows 
another will reap ; that if he plants a tree 
another will come in and wrest away from 
him the fruit, he straightway ceases to plant 
and sow. What makes the cotter's Saturday 
night so happy ? The cotter has been out in 
his little garden which he purchased and paid 
for with his hard earnings. He walks under 
the trees that he himself has planted. He 
looks at the little house that he has builded, 
and the garden that he has beautified, and a 
happy look steals over his face. When the 
time comes for him to go inside he turns to- 
wards his garden and stretches out his hand, 
as if bidding farewell to his friends. What 
lends sweetness to his toil ? The sense of 
ownership, — that it is his because he put his 
intellect and life into it. Wrest it away 
from him, and you have cut the hamstring 
of his labour. Ownership can change a 
143 



The Fortune of the Republic 

desert into a garden. Contrariwise, a loss 
of ownership can change a garden into a 
desert, and make a heap out of a factory and 
a waste out of a city. Communism has been 
tried again and again, and the world will 
not learn the lesson. Rome tried it. The 
Commune rose up in Eome and seized 
everything by spoliation. Then the Roman 
bad to choose between barbarism and com- 
munism on the one hand, and civilization 
and Csesar on the other. In that hour 
there was a Rubicon. Dr. Hitchcock once 
said : " Then Caesar crossed the Rubicon 
and saved civilization from the barbarism of 
communism." 

We have no Rubicon. We do not agree 
with those who say that communism is com- 
ing and is irresistible. But if it should come 
by spoliation of property, we shall have our 
Rubicon, and there will be a " man on horse- 
back'- to cross it. I do not believe it is com- 
ing; but in these days, when this philosophy 
fills all our journals, it is time for young men 
to read, and read wisely ; to think, and think 
deeply ; to examine both sides ; and the test 
of every new plank of individualism and 
Socialism is tbis : Does it strengthen the 
individual? Does it make each citizen 
144 



Individual Excellence 

stronger ? Does it tend to throw him on his 
own resources ? Does it make all citizens 
great ? Does it give an opportunity for each 
to make the most of himself ? Does it reward 
strength and wisdom and individual char- 
acter ? Does it give the youth full oppor- 
tunity to work out his own destiny ? Or 
does it make individual men sheep in a 
herd? Some identify Socialism with mu- 
nicipal ownership, and national control. 
With that definition most of us are at one. 
But Karl Marx, the master, means by So- 
cialism, the State ownership of all land, 
mines, tools, with every form of property 
whatsoever. If by Socialism is meant the 
latter, then the Kepublic will have none of 
it. For our institutions are founded on the 
rights of the individual and the duty of the 
individual to become strong and self-sacri- 
ficing. 

We return from our survey with the con- 
clusion that the secret of national greatness 
is the secret of personal culture and per- 
sonal happiness and character and individual 
worth. Are you ambitious for culture ? 
There is a word of Darwin's that oifers you 
guidance. He accounts for this progress of 
society by saying that the tendency of the 
145 



The Fortune of the Republic 

strongest individual is to survive and multi- 
ply. JSTow, in the life of personal culture, 
it is the tendency for the vision hour and 
the nobler aspirations to survive, to linger 
in the memory, and to multiply themselves 
until at last the soul leaves its low, ignoble 
methods and dwells all the time on the 
pure ideals with the nobler ambitions. Do 
you want influence ? Buy it ; depend on 
yourself. Do you ask for friends? He 
who would have friends must show himself 
friendly. Would you be numbered among 
those immortal dead who make us better by 
their presence ? Ask little of man, but give 
much ? Give good measure of service and 
love, and honour to your fellows, to your 
rivals, your city, your civilization, and your 
fellows will give back to you ; good measure 
shaken down and overflowing will they give 
into your bosom. 

Would you sow the world with unhap- 
piness and discontent, making two clouds 
where there was but one before ? Join 
the rank of the pessimists, who always 
of two evils choose both. Would you 
diffuse happiness on every side and carry 
the air of good cheer into every room ? 
Then let the sunshine in your own eyes 
146 



Individual Excellence 

travel upward and lend sunniness to every 
event outside of you. Would you be strong ? 
Bear your own burdens. Would you do im- 
mortal work? Eemember that, however 
humble your task, it was divinely appointed, 
and that you were guided for this special 
mission. Would you know the pathway 
that leads to perfect happiness ? That path- 
ways begins at Mount Sinai ; it passes through 
the valley and the shadow of Gethsemane ; 
it climbs the hill of Calvary, and it sweeps 
up to the foot of that cross where you may 
leave your burdens and your sins. Once 
Dives and Lazarus both get close to that 
sacred cross, and the Man whose name is 
above every name puts one hand on Dives 
and the other on Lazarus and both under- 
stand that they are brothers, hatred will be- 
come love, for strife there will be peace, for 
the trampled corn-field there will be the new 
paradise and a New Eden, and every man 
will dwell under his own vine in happiness 
and under his own fig tree in peace and 
prosperity. 

Self-love is wise also for nations. The 

very substance of the farewell address of 

Moses to Israel is Israel's duty to make 

the most out of itself, by what Ewald calls 

147 



The Fortune of the Republic 

"a wise, generous and patriotic love of 
one's country." A score of times, by way 
of emphasis and repetition, the sage charges 
Israel to make no treaties with other na- 
tions, warns them against entangling alli- 
ances with outside powers, quickens within 
them an intense love for their own institu- 
tions, and finally charges them to build a 
wall of isolation that shall be so high that 
they cannot look over the top of it, and see 
what goes on beyond. And what if any of 
these outsiders with their fleshly worship, 
their bestial offerings, their sacrifice of lit- 
tle children, their idolatry, and outrageous 
indulgences, what if any of these Philistines 
get in ? Make short work of them, in the 
way of expulsion ! is Moses' advice. And 
then, twelve full centuries come and go, 
while the Hebrew folk dwell apart, seeking 
to set forever the great ethical principles 
that made the Hebrew folk to differ from 
all other people whatsoever. Now by uni- 
versal consent Moses was right. History 
has fully justified his philosophy of nation- 
building. To-day the horticulturist breeds 
or inbreeds the flower or fruit until he 
sets forever the perfume of the one, and 
fixes the flavour of the other for all time. 
148 



Individual Excellence 

To-day some Burbank isolates his cactus, 
his new plum, or pear, and keeps at a 
distance every floating germ. Men are not 
blending two mediocre things to produce 
a third tasteless fruit. Scientists are isolat- 
ing the unique flower or fruit, intensifying 
it, feeding its roots to bring it to a larger 
stature, pruning the branches that a richer 
flow of juice may result. 

That was a shrewd man who said 
that if he were twenty years old, and 
had ten years to live, he would give 
the first nine years to preparation, that 
he might be ready to live the one last 
year. The wise lawyer and the wise jurist 
count all time given to preparation time 
saved. One way to rule the Philippines 
is by an army from without, and one way 
to rule Porto Rico is by a navy and by 
cannon. A much better way is to rule our- 
selves with such intelligence, justice and 
liberty that there will be not a single pauper, 
nor tramp, nor drunkard in the land ; not 
a single labouring man who wants work, but 
can get it, and not a single capitalist who 
holds back the wage of his workmen. In 
morals, what the world wants is one Saviour, 
one cross. In the propagation of Christi- 
149 



The Fortune of the Republic 

anity, what the world wants is one Paul, 
and then many disciples will become heroes 
for spreading the faith. In liberty, what 
the nations want is for this Kepublic to be- 
come ideal — ideal in the maintenance of equal 
rights for all ; just, in that no citizen suffers ; 
fair, in that no one man is handicapped, 
while another is helped unfairly. Could that 
ideal liberty but come about, every monarchy 
and absolute government in the world would 
dissolve, and all the people hasten to imitate 
the institutions of our country. For the 
best way for a father to make his sons 
scholars and patriots is first of all in his own 
youth to become a scholar and patriot him- 
self, and one of the ways of saving foreign 
countries to universal wisdom and peace is 
to save our own national soul. In his beauti- 
ful phrase John tells us that the purpose of 
God in history is to so exalt manhood that 
every one shall be called a " son of God," — 
that is, a king and prince — a hero, carrying 
a great weight of manhood and personal 
worth. 



i$o 



VI 



The Crime of Stirring up Class- 
Hatred 

By way of preeminence our age ought to 
be called the age of happiness and good for- 
tune for society. At last a time has come 
when shields are lifted for protection above 
all weakness and misfortune. In other 
ages poverty was the teacher and adversity 
goaded men along the upward path. Now 
has dawned an era when abundance has 
become a schoolmaster, and wealth is 
furnishing mankind with a thousand new 
incitements to progress. Such are the 
resources of our land, such the mental 
fertility and energy of our people, so 
prodigious are the new implements that 
have been invented, that wealth is beginning 
to flow in upon our people with the volume 
of a mighty river. This increase of property 
also has ministered chiefly to the happiness 
and prosperity of the poor. To-day the 
great arts and inventions are not working 



The Fortune of the Republic 

half so much for the rich and strong, as for 
the poor, the weak and the ignorant. After 
thousands of years of struggle, society has 
created the masterpieces of art, gathered the 
facts of science, achieved dramas and 
literatures, developed laws and liberties. 
But wealth was needed to cheapen these 
treasures, and place them in the hands of 
the humblest citizen. 

For centuries the wealthy could own a 
copy of the Bible or Shakespeare, but this 
year has witnessed the publication of one 
hundred volumes of the world's master- 
pieces at ten cents each. The rich man of 
other ages could purchase copies of the 
great Madonnas, but ours is an era when 
the newspaper multiplies copies and prints, 
so that without expense the love of the 
beautiful is nurtured in all the people. 
Going into a poor working man's home, 
some time ago, I found that a little girl 
of twelve had covered the walls of the 
small apartment with pictures of the great 
masterpieces cut from newspapers. Her 
collection included examples not only of 
Italian art, but also of the French, English 
and German. Had King Henry com- 
manded all the painters in his kingdom to 
152 



The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred 

range through the wide world and return 
with what was represented in that humble 
home, it would have cost the great sovereign 
untold thousands. And because beauty re- 
fines, photography is multiplying pictures. 
Because music is sweet, the cottage organ is 
hastening to every fireside. Because wisdom 
is better than rubies, the press and the school- 
room are freely distributing the jewels of 
the mind. Because money lends leisure and 
opportunities of growth, the wages of the 
working-man have been quadrupled, and the 
hours of toil in a century have been halved. 
Vacations, once undreamed of, refresh the 
jaded heart. The employer, who was once 
a tyrant, has largely become a coworker and 
friend. The genius of Christianity is becom- 
ing the genius of material civilization. Jesus 
Christ will yet lay one hand upon the shoul- 
der of Dives and one upon the shoulder of 
Lazarus, and set them face to face. The 
time is coming when the rich and the poor 
shall struggle not to escape the heavier bur- 
den, but for the right of bearing it, and with 
clasped hands the classes will climb towards 
the heights where dwell prosperity and 
peace. 

Since, then, the increase of property means 
153 



The Fortune of the Repubhc 

the increase of happiness for all classes, men 
who love their country and their kind will 
view with apprehension and profound alarm 
the attempt to array the poor against the 
rich, the farmers against the bankers, the 
manufacturers against the professional men 
— the classes against the masses. Every age 
and nation has been cursed by the dema- 
gogue, who practices as a fine art the stir- 
ring up of class-hatred. 

Long centuries ago, Alcibiades, the most 
brilliant profligate in history, whose wisdom 
was gleaned from his excesses, even as the 
will-o'-the-wisp is the light of putrescence 
and decay, arrayed the poor of Athens 
against the rich, and told them society was 
divided into two classes — the shearers and 
the shorn. In that evil hour the workers on 
the farm dropped their tools, left the grain 
to fall in the fields and the fruit to rot upon 
the vines and trees. In the city the shops 
were still, but the streets were filled with 
the noise of brawls and fights. On the 
morning of the day when the poor in- 
trenched themselves in the buildings on one 
side of the street and the rich built barri- 
cades on the other, Athens was in the 
zenith of its splendour and the perfection of 
154 



The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred 

its beauty and wealth. But when the long 
battle was over, the city was a mass of 
smoking ruins, the rich had become poor, 
the poor homeless and hungry. Conquered 
by the Romans, all were deported as slaves 
to foreign markets. Soon the silence of the 
desert fell upon the city from which civili- 
zation had a right to expect so much. 

But, if hatred of the masses towards the 
classes destroyed Athens, hatred of the rich 
towards the poor has been equally destruc- 
tive for Paris. A hundred years ago French 
literature was filled with scoffs, sneers, and 
contempt for the uneducated peasants. The 
leader of French infidelity, Voltaire, spoke 
of the poor as " a mixture of bear and 
monkey." His disciple referred to the 
masses as " half servants not yet fully ex- 
tricated from the clay." The attitude of 
princes was no less heartless. The historian 
tells us of a princess, who was late at an 
evening ball. It seemed that her maid, a 
beautiful girl named Constance, had set fire 
to her clothing and burned to death in the 
presence of her mistress. When the princess 
had apologized for the delay through the 
servant's accident and her hostess had said : 
"Poor Constance," both ladies passed for- 
155 



The Fortune of the Republic 

ward and, signalling for the music to begin, 
danced until daybreak. The poor resented 
the contempt of the rich. One day, when 
Foulon was asked by the people what they 
should eat if hard times continued, he 
answered : " Let the people eat grass." For 
answer, "the people hung him, stuck his 
head upon a pike and stuffed his mouth 
with grass amid the plaudits of a grass-eat- 
ing people." But close beside class-hatred 
stood anarchy, and soon the pavements of 
Paris were red with blood. When the poor 
were in power, they cut off the heads of the 
leaders among the rich ; when the rich 
gained the ascendency, they cut off the 
heads of the leading men among the poor ; 
before the strife was over the Seine was 
choked with corpses. France lost her prec- 
edency among the nations and her working- 
people were set back a quarter of a century. 
Since that era of class-hatred for France one 
hundred years have passed. In retrospect 
we see that France has lost practically all 
her colonies, and become a second-class 
power of forty millions while little England 
rules over four hundred millions. 

Now the class-hatred that has prevailed in 
countries where the hereditary classes rule, 
156 



The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred 

has no excuse in this free land. In our 
country there is no position so high that the 
boy from the forge, the factory or the farm 
may not aspire to and achieve the honour and 
office. If the monarchies have an artificial 
nobility, the Republic recognizes a natural 
nobility. Artificial nobility of the old 
nations is an order fixed and separated from 
all those below, no matter what their intel- 
lectual excellence or moral culture. Stand- 
ing above the mass of men and looking 
down upon them, artificial aristocracy ex- 
claims, " Between us and you there is a 
great gulf fixed. We cannot pass over to 
you, nor can you come to us." But in the 
Republic there is a natural aristocracy that 
includes the best and the wisest, and any 
one may join the noble class who choose to 
become worthy and wise. These noblemen 
of nature rise above other men — as has been 
said, not for filching away their strength, 
but rather as clouds are above the earth, to 
open their bosoms and cast down fertilizing 
rains, that every living thing may rejoice. 
Amid institutions like ours, therefore, the 
attempt to stir up prejudice and hatred 
among the people is un-American and 
vicious. Class-hatred can rear no factories, 
157 



The Fortune of the Republic 

but it can ruin those already existing ; casts 
no new treasure into society's granary, but 
can hurl a firebrand into the granary al- 
ready filled. Mankind is out upon a march 
away from dirt unto divinity ; but hatred 
can stay the advancing chariots, and turn all 
V^ the hosts back towards barbarism. 

Among other perils, class-hatred tends to 
obscure the achievements and the vast con- 
tributions to civilization made by men who 
have dwelt close beside poverty. In all ages 
the poor have not only been in the majority, 
they have also furnished the leaders for 
society's forward movement. Indeed, the 
rich men of to-day are the children of those 
who yesterday were poor. Call the roll of 
the great industrial leaders in New York or 
Philadelphia and they are seen to be the 
sons of adversity. Men who stand to-day 
upon fortune's crowning slope began a half- 
century ago in the vale of obscurity, while 
often the children of those who once were 
rich are now toiling with the lowly. 

Four volumes have recently been pub- 
lished, called ^'The Men of Achievement 
Series." These books tell the story of the 
great inventors, merchants and statesmen 
of this century. The biographer tells us that 
158 



The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred 

eighty-five per cent, of these leaders came 
from the farm and the small rural villages. 
The remaining fifteen per cent, did, indeed, 
come from the city, but they were almost 
without exception the children of compar- 
ative poverty. Society's experience in the 
past warrants the belief that the men who 
will be the commercial leaders of our city 
a generation hence are now threshing grain 
and husking corn or handling the saw and 
the plane in the shops of the city. How in- 
tense is modern civilization ! How rapidly 
does it consume the nerve and deplete the 
brain ! In the city men go down ere the 
life-course is half run. Those alone can 
hope for leadership who have spent their 
youth in the open air, hardening the mus- 
cles, compacting the nerve, developing great 
blood vessels and arteries, through which 
the blood can run in rich, free currents and 
be glorified in fine thinking. Looking 
backward, the history of great men seems 
to be the history of poverty. 

All giants went to school to adversity. 
We love Whittier the more because of his 
patient battle with poverty. Of Burns, and 
what poverty did for him, it has been said 
that this fascinating poet illustrates the 
159 



The Fortune of the Republic 

story that the nightingale sings its sweet- 
est song when its breast presses against the 
thorn. Of the great astronomers, Newton 
was the son of a poor widow, while Fergu- 
son's parents were so poor that the child 
was never sent to school, but while tending 
his sheep whittled a wooden clock and with 
a thread and a few beads marked the move- 
ment of the stars. Stephenson, the founder 
of the English railway system, was a herds- 
man at nine years, at eighteen did not know 
his letters, at twenty -four was still working 
in a colliery, where he devoted his days to 
toil, his nights to studying mechanics and 
making his own clothes. Michael Farraday 
was a scullion in the kitchen of Sir Humph- 
rey Davy, but he was faithful in the care of 
his master's chemicals, and from poverty 
passed to world-wide renown. " You need 
poverty alone to make you a great painter," 
said Turner to an English amateur, who was 
an artist. And not only has hard w^ork 
and self-reliance lent greatness to artists ; 
it has clothed orators like Clay and Webster 
with their wisdom and potency and lent 
gianthood to Lincoln and Grant. There 
is no price that wealthy parents might not 
afford to pay for the discovery of some in- 
i6o 



The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred 

strument that could do for their children 
what adversity and struggle did to produce 
greatness in the parents. 

Looking out upon the waves of the sea, 
that which is now crest in a moment will be 
trough, while the trough will be crest. 
Thus wealth moves forward with an undu- 
lating motion, and obscure families become 
renowned, while the renowned pass into 
obscurity. To-morrow the farmer's boy will 
make his way into the city and become the 
merchant or the banker. To-morrow the 
working-man's son, climbing upon the strong 
shoulders of his sturdy father, will look 
level into the eyes of men great in the pro- 
fessional classes. For it seems that three 
generations are requisite for producing a 
great man. First is the generation wherein 
physical toil develops and compacts a fine 
physique. Then comes a generation that 
through morality preserves this fine brain- 
fibre and makes it hereditary, setting vigour 
and health in the blood and brain. A third 
generation adds the intellectual element 
that makes greatness. To-day there are 
multitudes of farmers in the country and 
multitudes of toilers in the city, whose man- 
ner of life has been characterized by a 
i6i 



The Fortune of the Republic 

method of living so wholesome and moral 
as to render it practically certain that their 
children will take precedency among the 
foremost. Now every attempt to incite the 
industrious and thrifty poor to a hatred of 
the rich is to incite them against that very 
position to which their own sons aspire and 
will soon come. But how can hatred have 
any place between the brother who chooses 
the farm and the brother who chooses the 
bank or the store ? Ten poor generations 
of yesterday have blossomed in their great 
son and leader of to-day ; ten other gener- 
ations will blossom to-morrow into another 
great man. 

Why, then, should the columns of poor 
that will soon come to the throne be led to 
hate their own kind that have just arrived 
at power ? Society's interests are one. The 
steamers of our inland rivers, like the Mis- 
sissippi, are borne forward by side-wheels. 
The forward movement is made possible by 
the fact that the blades of the wheels that 
are now up will in a moment be down, while 
the blades one moment thrust against the 
waves will a moment later flash in the 
sunshine. Thus God hath ordained the 
rising and falling movement in society 
162 



The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred 

by means of which civilization moves for- 
ward. 

But if the rich do well to remember so- 
ciety's indebtedness to the poor, the poor 
also do well to consider that much of the 
wealth of field and factory has been pro- 
duced — not by land, not by labour, not by 
capital applied to both, but by ability. 
Among many men the impression prevails 
that labour alone has produced the wealth 
of store and factory and warehouse ; that 
the large fortunes of the rich have been cre- 
ated by and belong to the poor ; that he who 
has amassed a large fortune has done so by 
holding back the wage that belongs to his 
workman, or by corruption and the purchase 
of special privileges. The logical result of 
this idea is that all the wealth in the hands 
of the rich in justice belongs to the poor 
who produced it ; is class-hatred and class- 
warfare. An age fruitful in foolish and 
false ideas has produced none more erro- 
neous than the idea that labour has pro- 
duced all wealth. 

Fortunately^ of late all scholars and 
thoughtful men have begun to call atten- 
tion to the fact that to the power of land 
and labour and capital must be added a 
163 



The Fortune of the Republic 

fourth factor called ability. In his " Work 
and Wages " Thorold Kogers tells us that in 
1750 the average weight of a fatted bullock 
in England was 400 pounds. But Kobert 
Bakewell discovered a method of improving 
cattle and sheep by a system of crossing and 
selection, so that in fifty years the average 
weight of the fatted bullock went from 400 
to 1,200 pounds. Labour had toiled for 
centuries, and the utmost it could do was to 
produce a small, thin bullock. But ability 
came in and enabled labour, with the same 
exertion, to add 800 extra pounds. 

A still more remarkable instance of the 
fact that it is ability that has increased the 
world's store of wealth, is seen in the enor- 
mous saving through the reaper. In 1830, 
farmers toiled sixteen hours a day with the 
scythe and sickle. But the newly invented 
reaper saved the average farmer the labour 
of six men through a period of ten days in 
each year. In 1860, the ability of that single 
inventor was saving the nation annually 
$55,000,000. In 1890 the annual saving in 
labour was $100,000,000, and the aggregate 
saving in wages since 1840 is estimated 
at $4,000,000,000. The ability of that in- 
ventor represents through natural law a 
164 



The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred 

free gift of $50 each year to the average 
farmer. 

The steam engine offers an example 
not less stirring. Even after Watt had 
perfected his engine, Smeaton, the engineer, 
pointed out an obstacle that made the en- 
gine impracticable. Watt soon found he 
could not make cylinders of any large size 
that would make the piston steam-tight. 
When failure was certain, the indomitable 
inventor hoped to train young men to the 
task of making cylinders and nothing else, 
with the idea that at last the degree of ac- 
curacy would be developed by which the 
large cylinders would become possible. 
But, when training failed to produce the de- 
sired result, the ability of Henry Maudsley, 
with his slide-rest, did in a moment what the 
skill of no labourer could accomplish. Mal- 
lock says the ability of that man descended 
at once on a thousand workshops and sat on 
each of the labourers " like the fire of an 
industrial Pentecost, and increased the ef- 
ficiency of the toiler a thousandfold." 
Similarly, the ability of Arkwright, who 
perfected his loom in a secrecy as carefully 
guarded as ever patriot guarded himself 
against spies, placed that loom in the hands 
165 



The Fortune of the Republic 

of the labourer, set free ninety -five out of 
each hundred weavers and enabled one man 
in one year to weave cloth for clothing a 
thousand men for twelve months. Indeed, 
the last $200 of the average income of $600 
represents not the product of land or labour, 
but the gifts of ability, through less than a 
score of inventions and discoveries. 

Recently a demagogue asserted that all 
property was the product of the working 
classes and should be wrested from capital. 
Upon what misconception is that statement 
based ? A great writer declares that of the 
great labour-saving inventions the people 
have received over ninety-nine per cent, of 
the income thereof, while the inventors 
whose ability created these devices have re- 
ceived from one one-thousandth of one per 
cent, to one-tenth of one per cent, of the 
gain. Now and then, indeed, men make 
fortunes by oppressing the poor, by extort- 
ing unjust prices, or through bribery gain 
special privileges. But these fortunes are 
the exceptions. The great majority of the 
fortunes of this country have been made, 
not through fraud or oppression, but through 
ability that has done far more for the poor 
man than for its possessors. 
i66 



The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred 

A recent work contains a study of a hun- 
dred millionaires in New York City. These 
are some of the foundations of wealth : Oil 
lamps, wall-paper, clothespins, hooks and 
eyes, buttons, spices, wire-thread for sewing 
shoes, hemlock tar, attar of roses, blacking, 
glue, cocoa, yeast, dyes, to which must be 
added some eighty articles that have made 
their manufacturers millionaires. These 
rich men discovered certain wastes that 
were going on in the factory and workshop, 
and the saving of the remnants that others 
had thrown away made them rich — and so- 
ciety far richer. 

That these rich men became rich by mak- 
ing poor men poor, is a falsehood so colossal 
as to seem almost Alpine in its vastness. 
All that they have was gained through sav- 
ing what had been previously thrown away, 
and where they made one dollar out of their 
invention society has received ninety-nine. 
Indeed, the great need of our day is not 
land, nor labour, nor capital — but ability. 
Scientists tell us that eighty-five per cent, 
of all the coal burned passes out of the 
chimney. Some day, some poor machinist's 
boy, after long toil with his blast-furnace, 
will teach us how to consume our smoke, 

167 



The Fortune of the Republic 

and so add $25 a year to the income of each 
average family. Let us hope that this 
young machinist will become rich through 
his discovery, and let us also express hope 
that demagogues will not reward the in- 
ventor with the words " plutocrat,'* 
" money baron," " robber," " oppressor of 
the poor ! " 

In the world of engineering, the next point 
to be gained is how to apply the power of 
heat to the engine without the intervention 
of steam. The machinist who masters that 
principle will quadruple the power of all our 
tools. His inventive ability would increase 
the average income from $600 to $650. Let 
us hope that this inventor, too, having made 
a nation rich, will himself become rich also, 
and, also, have the good fortune to escape 
the scoffs and epithets used against honour- 
able wealth as a reward for his social serv- 
ices. To-day the wastes in the field, the 
remnants in the factory and the shop, and 
the dirt under man's feet, represent untold 
wealth. But the young men of the next 
generation will save these wastes, and their 
future savings will amass large fortunes. 

The crying need of the age is for inventive 
ability. For making the most of the ability 
i68 



The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred 

given us, the people have founded the com- 
mon schools and made them rich and beauti- 
ful in their equipment. There the rich man's 
son and the poor man's son sit upon the 
same bench. They receive the same instruc- 
tion, that each may shoot up as high as his 
talent will permit. To-day no single fact 
offers more hope than the fact that the 
ability of poor boys, educated in our com- 
mon schools, is bringing them into promi- 
nence and usefulness. Anarchy and social- 
ism propose to run a mowing-machine over 
the top of society and cut off the tall men's 
heads, until all are equal. The common 
school levels men, not by lowering the rich, 
but by lifting the poor. 

All thinking men will concede that God 
has ordained property as a means for de- 
veloping society and educating mankind. 
Confessedly, the amassing of wealth means 
thrift, ingenuity, economy and perseverance 
for the individual, while at the same time 
it ministers great treasure to the home and 
the market-place. Although commerce is 
often accompanied by incidental evil, yet on 
the whole, trade is an evangelist. Savagery 
always means poverty. When barbarism 
starts towards intelligence and Christianity, 
169 



The Fortune of the Republic 

it starts towards wealth. When that Ute In- 
dian, whose moral ideas permitted him to 
burn the settlers' homes, and tomahawk 
women and children, was captured, his 
wealth included one gun, one red blanket, 
fourteen scalps, and two large pieces of 
ochre for colouring his cheeks. But as sav- 
ages rise in the scale of manhood they rise 
in the scale of industry and property. God 
has made wealth to be the almoner of 
bounty towards the pasture and meadow, 
but also towards the gallery and college, to- 
wards art and science, morals and religion 
itself. The individual may increase on re- 
finement in the face of bitter poverty — but 
nations, never! 

And here, in a land where climate and 
soil are stimulants, where the ungathered 
riches in the sea, where the unbroken 
treasures in the wilderness and forests, 
where the riches in rocks and mines excite 
glowing expectation, all classes, poor and 
rich alike, need to remember that neither 
the denial of riches nor signal success can 
give happiness, but that it is work alone 
that gives rest and contentment. Doing 
with one's might what one's hand finds to 
do is the secret of happiness. Nor is there 
170 



The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred 

any other path that leads to peace. For 
ambition there is no rest ; for passion, there 
is no fruition of joy ; precedency often 
ripens no fruit save envy and bitter sorrow, 
and position brings such jealousy that the 
rising cloud of life is filled with flames of 
burning pain. God hath ordained that 
work alone brings peace. Ask the labourer 
at the forge or factory, ask him who shapes 
his blocks of stone or molds his pillar of 
brass, or polishes his wood, or perfects his 
tool, and the workman will tell you that 
honest toil gives a sweet peace that wealth 
cannot increase nor poverty take away. 
For God hath ordained that the heart shall 
sing when the hand does honest and honour- 
able work. 

The demagogue's power to stir up class- 
hatred will be strikingly lessened when rich 
and poor alike remember that all classes are 
working-classes and stand, therefore, upon 
an equal level. Unfortunately, the dema- 
gogue always points the poor to the idle and 
thriftless rich, while the rich are pointed to 
the vicious and intemperate. Long ago 
Kuskin reminded men that there are idle 
poor and idle rich, industrious poor and in- 
dustrious rich. There are beggars as lazy 
171 



The Fortune of the Repubhc 

as if they had the income of Croesus ; and 
there are rich men whose work begins long 
before the tramp has wakened, and whose 
task will not end until all thriftless ones 
have been long asleep. There is a working- 
class strong and happy, both rich and poor. 
And there is an idle class weak and miser- 
able among rich and poor alike. Unhappily, 
the wise of the one class habitually con- 
template the foolish ones in the other. 
Were industrious rich men to scourge the 
idle and spendthrift rich, did the industri- 
ous and worthy poor scourge the vicious 
and lazy poor for their vices, the agitator 
would soon have no occupation and the 
voice of the demagogue would die away as 
the voice of the wolf dies away in the dis- 
tant forest. 

In reality, the great majority of the poor 
are industrious and thrifty. They love 
country, they love liberty, the}'' love the 
home, they long to better the condition of 
their children. They are to-day the bul- 
warks of all that is best in our civilization. 
They stand for virtue and patriotism and 
religion. Civilization itself is a monument. 
But on the other hand the rich have equally 
been benefactors. The names of John 
173 



The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred 

Howard, the merchant ; of Peabody, the 
banker; of Cooper and Shaftesbury and 
Ruskin, glow like stars in the firmament of 
heaven. To-day the poor have no better 
friends than men who were trained in 
poverty's school how to become rich. 

Forecasting the future of the Republic, we 
must hope much from the new citizenship, 
made possible by a leisure class. Centuries 
ago the wealthy class of England recognized 
riches as an opportunity and a form of obli- 
gation. But, unfortunately, in this new 
land, where one generation has toiled unduly, 
the next generation rebounds from every 
form of work. Wealth comes to mean a 
weary attempt to kill time, while other men 
desire to save the precious hours ; means for 
many an August of indolence at the sea- 
shore ; means a September of never-ending 
games and sports for recovering from the 
awful fatigue of two sea-baths and three 
parties in one day ; means an October when 
the young sport recuperates his exhausted 
nerves by wringing the necks of a hundred 
beautiful birds and bathing his hands in the 
hot blood of a young fawn just killed, sup- 
plemented by two cock-tails after breakfast ; 
means for young women, too often, weary 
173 



The Fortune of the Republic 

assemblies, protracted through the night; 
costly and wearisome music, costly and 
burdensome dress, an expensive and cha- 
grined struggle for precedency in display, an 
endless vexing of the poor head over the 
tremendous problem whether the feathers in 
the hat should be pointed forward or back- 
ward in the autumn — it being, as has been 
said, entirely improper for the widows of 
India to burn themselves at their husbands' 
funerals, but entirely proper for an English 
or an American woman to torment her hus- 
band into his grave through the ceaseless 
struggle to buy each spring half a donkey's 
load of finery. 

But fortunately the example of some rich 
young men and the example of some rich 
women encourages the belief that the time 
draws near when our young men of leisure 
will imitate the example of Gladstone and 
Peabody and Shaftesbury and give them- 
selves to the problem of government in our 
city ; to the cleansing of the streets, to the 
housing of the poor, to the problems of the 
orphan and the newsboy and the sewing- 
girl, until the wrongs of poverty are 
righted and our civic life becomes beauti- 
ful and without blot or shame. Then will 
174 



The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred 

wealth become a blessing and not a 
blight. 

In foreign lands, rich in soil and climate, 
there are rivers which overflow their banks, 
polluting the fields, making the soil plague, 
and the wind, death. The river that should 
flow in rich irrigating streams from the 
meadow becomes famine for the land and 
pestilence for the cloud. And God hath 
ordained that wealth should flow through 
the land as a veritable river of water of life, 
but man's selfishness has made that river 
little better than the bitter waters of Marah. 
To-day multitudes are not so much in the 
position in which Providence placed them as 
in the ditch to which society has kicked 
them. Yet riches are instruments that may 
lift these unfortunates out of the slough. 
The genius of property is like the genius of 
poetry. It is a trust, held in the interests of 
weakness and poverty. The giant has 
strength given him, not for crushing weak- 
ness, but for supporting and guiding it. 
Wealth may say to the widow's son : " You 
have eloquence ; speak for me." May say to 
the workman's child : " You have genius ; 
carve or paint for me." May say to the 
young reformer : " Speak for me ; plead for 
175 



The Fortune of the Republic 

me ; pray for me." "Wealth may build booths 
for the weary pilgrim ; dig well-springs for 
thirsty lips ; plant vineyards for hungry 
wayfarers ; turn deserts into gardens and 
sloughs into fruitful fields ; carry light to 
those in darkness ; carry life to those in 
death. Then shall the rich and the poor 
alike find that the ways of sympathy are the 
ways of pleasantness, that the paths of 
service are paths of peace. 



176 



VII 

National Decay and Growth 

Among the great teachers of patriotism 
we must make a large place for Jesus Christ. 
He sanctioned patriotism by His life, com- 
mended it in His teachings, and illustrated 
it in one of the supreme hours of His life. 
His lament over Jerusalem tells us that He 
felt the downfall of His country — as keenly 
as He felt the spear-point and the nails. 
Insisting that every citizen and patriot 
should love his country. He also showed 
what are the signs of national decay, 
and what are the signs and the causes 
of national growth. His argument is very 
simple. Nature forecasts coming events, in 
the red sky that proclaims the angry storm, 
in the clear sunset that foreruns fair weather. 
Nature piles the clouds up on the horizon, 
as a warning for the sailor, putting out to 
sea, for the traveller, setting forth upon his 
journey, and, so clear are the signs that a 
foolish man, though he run, may read the 
news of the coming storm. 
177 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Then Nature broadens her argument, and 
takes on a wider meaning. In the orchard 
the peach or plum takes on a premature 
flush, telling of a worm boring at the heart. 
In the forest, in July, there is a flaming 
branch in the maple tree, whose sickly red 
betrays the sad injury that has overtaken 
that bough. In the household there is a 
youth or girl with two fire-spots burning on 
the cheek, and the brow of marble, and, 
beholding, the parents and physician go 
softly, for they know the time is short. 
But if Nature warns men in her realms, for 
nations also there are signs of peril, and 
clouds that precede storms. That His dis- 
ciples might better understand the signs of 
the times, Jesus led them to the gate of the 
city, where the multitudes thronged in and 
out. He pointed to workmen whose indus- 
tries had been ruined by bad government, 
unfair taxation, until the hand dropped the 
tool, and the heart was listless. He pointed 
to the beggar-class, gaunt, emaciated, starv- 
ing, standing with their back to the wall, 
and waiting eagerly for some signal of riot 
and anarchy. He pointed to the Koman 
soldiers, welcoming the news of an insurrec- 
tion in some province, going out empty- 
178 



National Decay and Growth 

handed, to return laden with spoil. What 
with misgovernment, war, foreign troops 
quartered on the people, class-distinctions ; 
what with the gluttony and drunkenness of 
the rich and the poverty and ignorance of 
the poor, the signs of the times were big 
with peril ! The people had broken the laws 
of health ; therefore, pestilence and disease 
would camp in their homes. The leaders 
had broken the laws of work; therefore, 
famine would stalk through the streets and 
death reap a rich harvest. The ecclesiastics 
were hypocrites, and had broken the laws of 
righteousness, and casting away faith, would 
bring anarchy to ravage the land. These 
were to be God's judgments — pestilence, 
famine, riot, war. Yet these are not arbi- 
trary penalties, sent by God, but natural 
penalties, dragged in by the people them- 
selves. It is the foul air of the city that 
breeds the storm, and the people of Jeru- 
salem had bred their own penalties, nour- 
ished their own judgments and invited 
destruction. And so to every Pharisee, 
priest and soldier, Jesus sends forth the 
words. Ye hypocrites ! who are not wise to 
read the signs of the coming storm. 

These words of Christ, inciting us to a 
179 



The Fortune of the RepubHc 

study of the signs of national decay or pros- 
perity, derive new meaning from the evident 
fact that commercial prosperity and national 
decay are often coexistent. In the hour of 
supremacy, for Jerusalem and Palestine, the 
nation was big with destruction. Indeed the 
land had never been more prosperous in 
trade, the era of David and Solomon alone 
perhaps excepted. So far as gold and silver, 
caravans and goods, herds and flocks were 
concerned, all was well. Gone the era of 
brigandage, and insecurity of property ! 
At this time the merchant and the farmer 
were safe. The whole land was a hive of 
industry. The Plain of Esdraelon was 
literally crowded with factories and shops, 
and the villages on the shores of Galilee 
pressed the one upon another. To the east 
of the Jordan were six hundred walled vil- 
lages. In Tyre, Herod built theatres and 
public baths. In Damascus he erected a 
system of aqueducts that still endure. In 
Capernaum and Samaria Herod built gym- 
nasia, vast colonnades and public temples. 
In Caesarea, in the interests of the fine com- 
merce that had been developed on the Lake 
of Galilee, he built a breakwater two hun- 
dred feet broad, long piers and quays, and 
i8o 



National Decay and Growth 

on the sides of the city marble houses, 
theatres and an amusement-garden for the 
merchants and traders. His own palace in 
Jerusalem was a marvel of Doric architec- 
ture, that has been likened by travellers to 
the emperor's palace in Rome. 

But the vast wealth and commercial pros- 
perity of the times is best indicated by the 
temple that Herod built in Jerusalem. 
Think of the forest of Corinthian columns, 
each five feet in diameter and twenty-seven 
feet high ; of the great entrance-doors of 
brass, overlaid with flowers and leaves of 
hammered gold, richly set with gems. 
Among the treasures of this temple that 
Titus carried away to Rome for his triumphal 
procession, was the table of shew-bread, 
made of solid gold. Outwardly the nation 
had never been so prosperous. 

But, what if " wealth accumulates and 
men decay " ? What if the merchant has 
bought the wages of silver in exchange for 
the souls of men ? What if rich purples are 
woven, but stained red with the blood of 
women's fingers ? Speaking to the soldiers, 
who had spoiled provinces of their treasures, 
to lying merchants, to " that fox, Herod," to 
the wicked Pharisees, with their "money- 
i8i 



The Fortune of the Republic 

trust " for changing gold in the temple, and 
their " sheep-trust " in that the priest would 
offer no lamb that was not purchased from 
the trust at double price, Christ said, " Oh, 
ye hypocrites, can ye not discern the signs 
of the times ? " This wealth of things was 
only show-wealth. It was " fool's gold," 
not solid metal ; lying paint on the outside 
of a sickly cheek ; mere veneer, not a solid 
substance. 

What makes a rich nation ? The number 
of men the nation has, who are noble, wise, 
pure, self-sufficing. Wealth is life, and its 
exuberant exhibit through ideas. The 
physical basis of life is things, but life is in 
the great thoughts a generation thinks. It 
is in its books and arts, its liberties, the rich- 
ness of personal manhood and joyous 
womanhood ; in the hopes and happiness of 
its children, playing in the streets and un- 
disturbed by vice and crime. What doth it 
profit a nation if it gain the whole world 
of tools and ships and goods, if the men in 
the factories are broken in spirit, if work- 
men go sullen to their tasks, if their wives 
commit suicide ? What if our billions may 
be prefigured by the poet's image? — the 
rich garment that a wrecker unwraps from 
182 



National Decay and Growth 

the body of a captain lured upon the rocks, 
the gold taken by a brigand from a noble 
soldier, slain through ambush, the pieces of 
silver gained by betraying one's master and 
Lord. There is a wealth that is poverty. 
"Woe unto the nation that loads itself 
down with thick clay, supposing it to be 
wealth. 

The greatness of an individual and nation 
is threatened when the intellect is ahead of 
the conscience, and culture is ranked above 
morality. History teaches that mental 
power and moral principle must journey for- 
ward side by side. Unfortunately, our gen- 
eration seems to know the right, but to be 
losing the power of doing it. Among cer- 
tain classes moral illiteracy prevails. The 
school has lent the intellect wings, but the 
conscience crawls. The reason moves 
swiftly along the highway with the speed of 
a palace-car ; the virtues follow slowly, as if 
moving in an ox-cart. Unfortunately, a 
generation may be wise towards books and 
illiterate towards morals. Solomon was at 
once the " wisest" and the " meanest" of men. 
Daniel speaks of the image that was part 
gold and part mud — which is a portrait of 
the Hebrew king who had read and written 



The Fortune of the Repubhc 

many books, but who was profligate, drunken 
and personally indecent and vicious. At 
the very moment that the wise king's fore- 
head was crowned with the flowers of wis- 
dom his feet were in the mire of passion. 
Witness also Lord Bacon's knowledge of 
science and his sale of judicial decisions and 
his acceptance of bribes ! Witness Goethe's 
culture and Goethe's infidelity to the women 
he loved ! By common consent ours is an 
educated era ; those instruments for the dif- 
fusion of knowledge and wisdom, the com- 
mon schools, the press and the book, were 
never so strong nor so numerous. Would 
that our generation could do all that it 
knows and obey every principle it has dis- 
covered ! The rulers of this nation would 
doubtless be glad to exchange a part of the 
knowledge possessed by the reason to re- 
ceive in return an increment of obedience 
for the mind and heart. 

Alfred Kussell Wallace raises the inquiry 
about other planets and their inhabitants. 
Does that distant planet possess a city 
like ours ? If so, do the inhabitants of 
that city know how to turn corn into 
whisky, poppy leaves into opium, bark into 
cocaine ? Do seven hundred of the people 
184 



National Decay and Growth 

of one city commit suicide each year ? Are 
there fifteen thousand murderers let loose to 
wander like mad dogs among the people ? 
Do they have trusts there, whose leaders 
bribe rebates and special rates from rail- 
roads ? Do the leaders of these trusts, by 
breaking the laws of that republic, train 
young men in methods that will bring them 
up in the penitentiary ? Have they drug- 
gists in their cities, one of whom sells $300 
worth of morphine in a single month, as 
does a druggist in yonder city ? Are there 
scientists there who know how to grind 
charcoal and mix it with saltpetre with 
such skill that by adding a match they can 
slay a thousand peasants who follow one 
military leader, but know not at all what 
they are fighting about, and who have no 
idea why they should kill other people or 
themselves stand up in rows and be killed ? 
Yet all these are common events in our 
world. They represent forms of knowledge 
and intellectual culture, but all these knowl- 
edges might well be exchanged for a small 
quantity of good morals. Ours is a world 
where the new Adam knows how to sharpen 
daggers and construct deadly weapons, but 
when this rnodern Adam throws himself 
?8S 



The Fortune of the Republic 

upon the grass in the garden of Eden he finds 
the grass soaked with his brother's blood. 
Little wonder that, sleeping, he dreams bad 
dreams. 

It is a sign of national decline for the 
people to misunderstand the message of the 
prophet and the poet. In that hour when 
Christ pointed out the signs of the times, 
the people knew Him not. He was their 
one man of vision. He was the greatest 
thing their nation had ever had. The gift 
of the prophet and the poet is like God's 
gift of the sun to a dead world in winter. 
And yet, Christ's voice, the words He spake, 
the deeds He did, meant more to the mer- 
chants and rulers of His city and nation than 
all things else beside. The prophet is God's 
man, who sees clearly the signs of the times, 
who feels them deeply, burning with a divine 
rage against falsehood and injustice, and 
who lives holily, rising above all the beset- 
ment of His time. The prophet and the poet 
are a torch, burning at midnight, to bring 
the wandering nation back into the path. 
The man of God goes into the desert to 
brood and pray, but he comes back to save 
the city. Jesus was the one person in all 
that multitude who saw the impending 
i86 



National Decay and Growth 

destruction and the black cloud hanging 
above the doomed streets, and the eagle and 
vulture drawing near because they saw the 
carcass, for their hunger. Jesus was the one 
teacher who pointed out the cure for all the 
ills of the time. But men blinded their 
eyes, and would not read God's writing ; 
they stopped their ears, and would not hear 
this world-melody, — this alluring music from 
heaven for guiding the pilgrim host in their 
upward march. What a revelation all this, 
of the decay of the individual ! What an 
awful injury had overwhelmed the people, 
who could not understand their greatest man! 
History tells us that every mistake of any 
nation has come through a failure to follow 
the warning of the prophet and seer whom 
God sends. 

Consider Carlyle's warning to England. 
In substance, he said to the merchants of 
Manchester ; " The nexus between you em- 
ployers and you people is a cash nexus. Be- 
tween you as manufacturer and your work- 
man, there is a great gulf fixed ; you have 
emphasized class-distinctions until your 
working people have become but the mere 
accidents of a machine. Yet, despising 
them, when a generation has passed, what 
187 



The Fortune of the Republic 

through poor food, poor ventilation, bad 
air, you will destroy the source of your 
wealth." Then, fifty years pass by. The 
Boer War is on. The sons of the factory- 
people come in to enlist as soldiers. But 
what a tragedy is revealed ! The factory- 
boys pass before the recruiting officer, and 
are refused because of their thin blood, 
stunted bodies, spindling legs, weak eyes, 
deficient nerve-power ; only an occasional 
factory-youth measures up to the standard 
for a soldier. They go down like grass be- 
fore the scythe of these strong-handed Boers. 
Then Parliament appoints a commission of 
inquiry, to investigate the causes of the 
physical degeneracy of the factory-folk. 
Startled by these conditions, an author be- 
gins his investigation. Bead that tragic, 
heart-breaking book, " People of the Abyss." 
Think of what is involved in this, that in 
those wondrous isles of Britain, among the 
Scotch and English, who, two generations 
ago would have died rather than beg a 
crumb of bread, there are now 4,000,000 
beggars, and persons receiving state-relief — a 
loaf of bread, clothes, or soup. 

Come to your own country. Whittier, 
the poet of freedom, Lowell, the poet of 
188 



National Decay and Growth 

service, Emerson, the sage — all warned the 
North and the South — the unearthly note 
was in their voice, the divine warning in 
their words. But the nation would not 
hear. Lowell makes his plea for the slave, 
having caught Christ's spirit, who bade the 
strong serve the weak. Read his " Vision 
of Sir Launfal." It is a prophet's warning 
to the Southern slave-holder and gentleman. 
The young prince leaves his palace, to search 
for the Holy Grail. Riding forth on his 
splendid charger, the youth, with jewelled 
finger, meets a beggar, and jauntily tosses 
him a coin. In pride he rides, and because 
of pride the years come and go. Still the 
Holy Grail eludes his sight. Wars, strife, 
battle, defeat, imprisonment crowd the sum- 
mers and the winters. At last he is old and 
bent and poor, and he returns to his native 
land, having never seen the blessed Grail. 
But in his absence enemies have arisen, they 
have ruined his palace, and death has taken 
away his loved ones, and, a poor man, he re- 
turns to scenes that know him not. And 
lo, again, a beggar asks an alms. But 
now — softened by suffering — Sir Launfal 
shares his crust, and takes the beggar's hand 
in his, and gives him brotherhood. And in 
189 



The Fortune of the Republic 

that hour the mask falls from the beggar's 
face and lo, it is Sir Launfal's Master, and 
on the Master's head there falls a beam of 
light, and down the golden bridge of light 
the crimson cup doth slide, and the Vision 
Splendid burns, and in an ecstasy of tears 
and prayers and joy. Sir Launfal bows his 
head to the ground and confesses his pride 
and folly and his sin. And this was Lowell's 
warning, the poet's interpretation of the 
signs of the times ; that poet who looked at 
the seamstress through poverty spoiled, at 
the workman, degraded for lack of wage 
withheld, at the street waif, and heard His 
Master say, " These are the images you have 
made of me." And when a few years had 
passed by, lo, the proud South is stripped, 
and in the thrifty North thousands of homes 
are in mourning, desolated by war. 

But yet, we have not learned the lesson ; 
we have not seen the Holy Grail. What is 
to be the end of this era of national need ? 
Our merchants may be peeled of their pos- 
sessions, our magnates may find their wealth 
taking wings, pestilence may stalk through 
our avenues, because our leaders are blind 
leaders of the blind, mere hypocrites, who 
discern the clouds of the sky, but under- 
190 



National Decay and Growth 

stand not the signs of the times. It is 
warning the nation wants to-day ; and leader- 
ship. O for the poet with a note of pierc- 
ing, heavenly sweetness ! O for an hour of 
some Wordsworth, with his Ode to Duty, 
that strong law-giver that " with her stern- 
ness doth wear the godhead's most benig- 
nant grace." O for another Lowell, bap- 
tized and set apart to plead the cause of the 
slave, the outcast girl ! 0, for a return of 
the spirit of Carlyle and Euskin and Emer- 
son, with their stern words ; descending on 
our grossness, our luxury, our mammonism, 
the loose hold we have on our convictions, 
as an avalanche descends, falling like the 
flame of fire, like the whirlwind and the 
scourge, to destroy sham, lies, luxury, prof- 
ligacy, vulgarity ! 

Another sign of national degeneracy is 
the decline of the adventurous spirit in the 
nation's youth. Tell me what are the ideals, 
the occupations that appeal to young men 
in our great colleges, and I will tell you 
what the next generation will be. In the 
old Greek book, Xenophon says that when 
Cyrus fronted the regiment that was made 
up of young men, his cheek turned pale, and 
the old soldier trembled — the historian's 
191 



The Fortune of the Republic 

tribute to the adventurous spirit. It is a 
truism that the history of England for two 
hundred years is the history of the dreams 
and prayers of John Milton. Green says 
that England's statesmen have been trying 
to put into terms of law and liberty the 
visions of the great poet. Now, if you 
would understand what this means, open 
Milton's biography. A mere child of four- 
teen, his spirit burns like a martyr flame. 
The vision of God has possessed itself of 
the boy's soul. It has been said that talent 
is what a man has — genius is what has a 
man. Thus of the nation, a mediocre age 
has things and wealth ; a great generation 
is one that is possessed by ideals. And 
John Milton's distinguished soul dwelt apart 
from others because God sent the dream 
and vision that possessed it. He went 
through all the years at Cambridge, living 
in purity and prayer. He thrust every im- 
pure thought out of his mind, as a vestal 
virgin avoids the mud and mire. The very 
thought of profanity, of indecency, of glut- 
tony and drunkenness in his companions 
filled him with agony. At length Milton 
lived apart from them. Because he wanted 
to write an epic poem that the world would 
192 



National Decay and Growth 

not willingly let die, he lived an epic life. 
And then, he heard the sevenfold hallelujah 
chorus of God, his vision broadened, and he 
made his plea for the liberty of the printing 
press. 

What a mighty vision for England, that 
vision of England shaking herself like a lion, 
rising up against its enemy ! The greatest 
thing that has happened to England in three 
centuries — John Milton's visions and his 
prayers. And when God withdraws this 
adventurous spirit from our sons, then our 
church, our city, our nation, has passed into 
its decline. Henceforth it remains only to 
produce things and mark time ; but the na- 
tion's great work is ended. 

I do not know how you interpret a recent 
article in one of the magazines, saying that 
if once the educated men chose the profes- 
sions, now they choose everything but the 
professions. What does it mean that Presi- 
dent Eliot calls the ministry to-day the most 
adventurous career open to young men, and 
that few churches have a student looking for- 
ward to this work of man-building and man- 
saving ? What does it mean, that we have 
no single great poet in our land, and that 
Lowell has no successor ? What does it 
193 



The Fortune of the Republic 

mean, that once the Olympic games, Athens' 
great exhibit, was the exhibit of dramas, 
tragedies, and comedies, of orations and 
poems that we are still translating ? In 
the modern "World's Fair," is there a single 
day set apart for the presentation of a 
drama that twenty-five hundred years from 
now will be translated in the colleges of 
China ? This is saying nothing against the 
athletic spirit in the American college. The 
athlete, the man of big neck and thick arm, 
has his place. I am simply saying that his 
place is not the work of the poet, of the 
dramatist, of the seer ; that "Wordsworth 
and Milton and Emerson and Lowell, that 
John the Baptist and Isaiah dwelt apart in 
solitude, and lingered over their dreams and 
visions, and saved and guided and sweetened 
their nation. For if it is faith that nour- 
ishes life, great character and greatness, it 
is hope that sustains genius ; but it is good- 
ness and love that perfect the character of 
a man and a nation. 



194 



VIII 

Christian Unity and Church 
Consolidation in the Republic 

Every age has its own task and every 
generation makes its special contribution. 
No era has had a character more distinct- 
ively its own than the present one, but dif- 
ferent men characterize our era by different 
terms. The inventor, loving tools, calls our 
age the age of machinery and labour-saving 
devices. The scientist calls it the era when 
great principles have organized scattered 
facts, and put the truth in systematic form. 
Merchants call ours the age of commerce, 
because of the increase of comforts and con- 
veniences. The educator calls it the era of 
pedagogy, with new methods in kinder- 
garten and schoolroom, in lecture-hall, and 
library. The artist describes it as the era 
of the diffusion of the beautiful. The love- 
liness that once was concentrated in castle 
or cathedral is now spread abroad and be- 
come an integral part of the clothes we 
195 



The Fortune of the Republic 

wear, the books we read, the parlours and 
libraries in which we live. But the practical 
man tests our age by results. From his 
material viewpoint, our age is preeminently 
the age of organization and efficiency, the 
era when wastes are saved, and the products 
of work are quadrupled. The outstanding 
words to-day, therefore, are organization, 
cooperation, unity, efficiency, the increase 
of the output, through dispensing with cut- 
throat competition. 

Examples of this organization are num- 
berless. It began with the common utili- 
ties. Instead of ten thousand wells in the 
city, we now have one far-away reservoir, 
filled with crystal water, supplying ten 
thousand homes ; instead of thousands of 
lamps, we have one central electric plant ; 
instead of scores of little shops with enor- 
mous wastes, we have been given a few 
great stores with cheapened goods ; in the 
place of many factories, each duplicating 
the other's output, with enormous wastes 
and poor work as the consequence of rivalry 
and enmity, we see one central plant, the 
saving of the wastes, and for rivalry and 
undercutting, cooperation and efficiency. 
In the intellectual realm, the city long ago 
196 



Unity and Church Consolidation 

left behind the score of little schools, with 
small classes, and organized one great " high 
school," where each professor can lecture to 
a hundred students. Now also this move- 
ment towards organization has struck the 
rural districts. Twenty years ago, there 
were a dozen little red schoolhouses in the 
township, poorly heated, and with no ap- 
pliances for teaching arithmetic, physiology, 
geography, or astronomy, in each of which 
were assembled some thirty scholars, with 
two or three pupils in a class. To-day these 
little schoolhouses are closed and deserted. 
The principle of cooperation has built one 
central school, large, beautiful, full of light 
and air, with maps, charts, globes, labora- 
tories, library, and everything that is calcu- 
lated to make attractive the path that leads 
to the temple of learning ; public servants, 
answering to the rural mail-carriers, drive 
from farmhouse to farmhouse, bringing the 
children and young people to the given 
centre, and carrying them home again at 
night. The many teachers, poor and scantily 
paid, have been replaced by three instructors 
of signal ability, with large salaries. The 
inevitable result is a renaissance of educa- 
tion and intellectual enthusiasm in the rural 
197 



The Fortune of the Republic 

districts. The gains for the intellect have 
been unmeasurable. 

Now, last of all, the organization move- 
ment has struck the churches. The epoch 
of church unity has fully come. It could 
no longer be delayed. The men who have 
simplified business, reorganized the banks 
under one management, reorganized the 
factory and the store and the shops, are the 
men who are now in the pews. Having 
learned how to save the wastes on Saturday, 
they are irritated by the ecclesiastical wastes 
manifest on Sunday. In the realm of the 
intellect, they have discovered that one cen- 
tral high school is practical and efficient for 
hundreds of children who are pursuing the 
life intellectual. At last these business-men 
have fully determined upon some form of 
church that will answer in things moral 
and spiritual to the high-school and uni- 
versity in literature and science. The age of 
specialism has come. These business-men 
realize that it is unnecessary, illogical, puerile, 
and wicked, to duplicate many church-plants, 
involving enormous wastes and lessened effi- 
ciency, when one central church-plant could 
quadruple the results, at one-quarter of the 
cost. The church is a school of morals, a 
198 



Unity and Church Consolidation 

college for spiritual culture. And the great 
simplicities of Jesus Christ and Christianity 
are as universal as the axioms of arithmetic 
and geometry, or the law of gravity in 
astronomy. We now have one hundred and 
sixty-nine different denominations in the 
United States. Nothing is risked in saying 
that business-men are now engaged in starv- 
ing to death one hundred and sixty of them. 
Now that this movement for church unity 
and cooperation has begun it seems all but 
incredible that our intelligent American soci- 
ety should have endured the old divisive con- 
ditions so long. When the strong business- 
man thinks of Christianity broken up into 
169 churches, he also begins to think about 
the one central high-school system in each 
city broken up into 169 different kinds of 
schoolhouses. What if high-school teachers 
should open separate schools upon the ground 
that one wishes to use a certain kind of arith- 
metic, written by a man named John Calvin, 
and another a geography and a method of 
recitation by John Wesley ? What if dif- 
ferent branches of the high-school sprang up 
as the result of controversy as to the coat 
worn by Archbishop Laud; or as the out- 
come of peculiar theories about the way of 
199 



The Fortune of the Republic 

explaining the bird tracks on the sandstone 
of New Jersey ; or of some opinion on the 
subject of the name of the man who built 
the little red schoolhouse ? In the begin- 
ning, we are told, the Christian Church was 
" all with one accord in one place," but if 
Peter and Paul were to come to New York, 
or to New Orleans, or to San Francisco, or 
to Boston, they would find the members of 
this one Church in 169 different places, with 
a practical man, named James, leading one 
group of disciples ; an emotional Peter lead- 
ing another group; the aesthetic John lead- 
ing still another ; and the philosophic Paul 
guiding his own band. The cross of Christ 
stands in the centre, but each regiment 
with back towards that cross, marches away 
from his fellows, while his denominational 
leader beats the time. Yet unity, and 
cooperation, could combine these scattered 
regiments into a solid army, marching to vic- 
tory. The results of this division and denom- 
inational rivalry are a decline in the interest 
in the Church and of the attendance upon it; 
a support waning to the point of extinction. 
I have before me the statistics of a town 
in a Western State, with a thousand in- 
habitants. Two of the churches are closed, 



Unity and Church Consolidation 

with boards nailed over the windows, a 
third is used as a storehouse for grain. Of 
the six churches in the place, but two are 
open and these meet with scant support. 

In order that my facts should be first-hand 
facts, I recently visited several towns in as 
many States, to familiarize myself with all 
the conditions of churches, ministers, and the 
views of the people and the pastors. One 
of these towns has 1,800 people in the vil- 
lage and country round about, with eight 
churches and ministers. By reason of con- 
ditions of infancy, age, invalidism, and the 
necessities of the home, not more than 
1,000 of the 1,800 people can possibly go 
to church. On the theory that every one 
of the 1,000 is a church supporter, this gives 
each church 135 people. It is obviously im- 
possible for such a handful to support a 
strong church. The breaking up of the 
musical, the educational, the social and 
spiritual talent of the community into eight 
sections, is scandalous and wicked. What 
wastes result ! Six or eight feeble choirs 
with a half-dozen voices in each one, instead 
of one splendid chorus of fifty voices, chant- 
ing the noblest music for the entire commu- 
nity. Eight little Sunday-schools, each with 

201 



The Fortune of the Republic 

fifty children, instead of one great Bible- 
school, employing the teaching-talent of the 
village, and duplicating the enthusiasm of 
the village high-school in the enthusiasm of 
the Sunday-school. Eight little churches, 
each with a poor piano or organ, instead 
of one noble pipe-organ, the joy of the 
1,800 people. Eight little churches with 
poor architecture, poorly painted, poorly 
equipped, with none of the comforts and 
conveniences to be found in the rich man's 
home, where there ought to be one splendid 
central church of noble architecture, with a 
pipe-organ, with all the musical talent of the 
town and the country round about gathered 
in a choral union, preparing the oratorios 
for the Christmas season and the spring fes- 
tival. 

But the greatest waste of all is in the pul- 
pit. 'Not one of the ministers in this town 
has a salary of over a thousand dollars. 
Out of a thousand dollars to-day, what man 
can buy the books he needs for his mental 
equipment? College and university bred 
men are in his pews, and this makes it 
necessary for the preacher to be the equal 
of the college-man in learning, and his su- 
perior in those things that specially apper- 
202 



Unity and Church Consolidation 

tain to the clergyman's own profession. The 
minister should have a salary that will enable 
him to have the advantages of the business- 
man, who travels in the summer, who has 
an outing in the winter, his books and maga- 
zines, and opportunities for personal culture ; 
but on a thousand dollars the minister can- 
not buy books, and starves intellectually. 
He cannot visit the nation's capital once each 
winter, and broaden out like the merchant 
or banker. He cannot once in ten years go 
abroad for the summer vacation. He does 
not so much live as exist, " at a poor dying 
rate." The merchants and bankers, and 
lawyers, and farmers, in the little rural town 
and cities, on Monday noon stand looking 
at the central high-school, and when they see 
how unity and cooperation have strength- 
ened the intellectual life of the community, 
they turn and look at the eight or ten little 
church buildings, shake their heads sadly 
and go away and think. Instead of drop- 
ping out one by one, by scores they are fall- 
ing away from these little churches. Either 
the Christian forces of the ten thousand 
small towns and villages of the country 
must unite, or the churches will perish, and 
one-half of the ministers die or resign, with 
203 



The Fortune of the Republic 

broken hearts. Indeed, to-day, there is no 
tragedy in this country so piteous as the 
tragedy of the broken-hearted pastors, who 
in many instances want to unify the forces 
of the community, but who are often com- 
pelled to struggle on, against their judgment 
and their better conviction. 

For the smaller towns in the suburbs, and 
certain unit neighbourhoods of great cities, 
the ideal for the Christian Church is not far 
to seek. Given a country town of two thou- 
sand people, of whom never more than 
twelve hundred can be in church at a time, 
the problem is comparatively simple. The 
great Eoman Catholic Church will doubtless 
continue for a long time to come, because it 
is based upon a principle of government, and 
of unity through external authority. But 
for the Protestants surely church unity, on 
the basis of the great simplicities of Christi- 
anity, is not only possible, but practical, and 
easy of achievement. In scores of communi- 
ties in this country, this Union church has 
actually come. The many small church 
buildings have been given up, and instead 
of the many preachers, two or three have 
been secured. 

What an ideal is this ? One noble build- 
204 



Unity and Church Consolidation 

ing, centrally situated, crowded from Sun- 
day morning until the next Saturday night, 
a church that is the centre of the social, the 
musical, the literary, the ethical life of the 
community ; the home of light and joy ; the 
pride of all the people. With numbers 
come enthusiasm, economy, emulation, ef- 
ficiency. When all the musical talent of the 
community is organized and unified, music, 
the highest of the fine arts, will become a 
great moral force. When all the teaching 
forces are united — and the art of teaching 
is a great gift, and there are only a few 
teachers out of two thousand that know how 
to impart wisdom, — the Sunday-school will 
again become popular. Instead of ten 
preachers there ought to be three. One of 
these should be the preacher or prophet-man 
who sees the truth clearly with his intel- 
lect ; who feels the truth deeply, and who 
is able to state the truth simply, so that the 
young and old, the wise and ignorant alike 
not only behold the clusters of God's fruit, 
but find the branches on which it hangs 
within easy reach. Men speak of "mak- 
ing " a sermon. Making a sermon, a mes- 
sage ? Why, it is a crime to use the word. 
The prophet " receives " from the lips of 
205 



The Fortune of the Republic 

God His message — does not make it. He 
must go apart, and think, and brood, and 
pray, and in solitude feed his soul, until at 
last he comes forth, a man of vision, who 
realizes what John Euskin meant when he 
said that the thirty minutes on Sunday, 
when the man of God stands forth to speak 
to ignorant and sinful men, are the most 
important thirty minutes known to society 
and civilization. 

But if the preacher makes public teaching 
primary, and his pastoral work secondary, 
there must necessarily be connected with 
the church another man whose pastoral work 
will be primary, and his teaching- work sec- 
ondary ; a man who will pass from house to 
house and school to school, a light-bearer, a 
happiness-maker, a personal friend of every 
family ; a man who will go through the 
community searching out the boys who wish 
to go to college, the boys who will, in the 
days to come, speak for the state, paint or 
carve for the state ; a man who will organize 
the forces of the community against the 
saloon, the gambling-den, and the poor- 
house. The great library of this ideal 
church and its social rooms, equal to those 
of the best club-rooms in the great cities, 
206 



Unity and Church Consolidation 

will be the centre of the artistic life of the 
town, where the new painting, purchased by 
some merchant prince, will be exhibited for 
all to see ; where the club life for young 
men, the literary life for young women, and 
the musical life for all classes will centre. 
Men who have now withdrawn from the 
church, would return to such a church as 
this. Men who have given a little to the 
church would give much. 

In this church of the future, that in many 
communities of this country is already a 
church of the present, there will be a great 
sermon in the morning, that represents the 
thought and study and prayer of six days 
and nights, of a man whom God ordained 
through his ancestry for moral illumination. 
There will be a great Bible-school, towards 
which all the families w^ill converge. There 
will be a great choral service in the after- 
noon, that will be more attractive than all 
the things of the park, or the ball-field. 
There will be a practical address to young 
people at night, that will lead men out of 
ignorance into wisdom, out of selfishness 
and sin into righteousness, and the manhood 
of Jesus Christ. 

Some will say that this is an ideal, and 
207 



The Fortune of the Republic 

therefore impracticable. But the ideals of 
to-day will be the realities of to-morrow. 
Christ desired His Church to be one, and 
what Christ worked for, God will achieve. 
The ideal that Christ has proposed for His 
Church is the one thing that will be set up 
on earth, namely, a unified Church, where 
all with one accord shall recognize one God 
— our Father ; one inspirer, comforter, and 
consoler — His eternal Spirit ; one Saviour — 
Jesus Christ ; one symbol of sin and sacri- 
fice — Christ's cross ; confess one need — the 
need of a heart of flesh and God's mercy 
and forgiveness ; swear fidelity to one law 
— the law of love ; and look for one hope — 
the hope of life immortal. 

Some one will object that church unity is 
impracticable, and urge that men represent 
diverse temperaments — some impulsive, 
fervid, and emotional — men of feeling ; 
some loving creeds, and putting the truth 
into symbols and systems, emphasizing the 
intellect ; some living by rule and method, 
emphasizing government and the seat of au- 
thority ; and some practical, wishing to do 
religion, — caring nothing about church polity 
and government, church doctrine and creed, 
church litanies and liturgies, only concern- 
208 



Unity and Church Consolidation 

ing themselves with daily deeds, practical 
service. On the basis of these temper- 
aments, it is said that denominations must 
exist to the end of time ; that the 169 sects 
will divide us permanently. But Chris- 
tianity is a system of universals. It deals 
with a system of universalities. 

The Ten Commandments and the Sermon 
on the Mount, and the teachings of Jesus 
Christ, are no more denominational than 
the multiplication-table. The principles of 
ethics are no more Presbyterian or Episco- 
palian or Congregational, than the laws of 
light and heat. The facts of geology, and 
astronomy, and physiology, and hygiene are 
the same for all people ; and the simplicities 
and universalities of Christianity appeal to 
men as men. The essential things in the 
high school are the things of literature and 
science and mathematics. These are taught 
to all temperaments and classes by the 
school-teachers. The individual theories on 
political economy, tariff, and protection, can 
be taught at home by the parents. The 
things of God and Jesus Christ are the great 
essentials. The unessential things are the 
things of John Calvin, of the Congregation- 
alist John Robinson, of the Baptist Roger 
209 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Williams, of the Episcopal Archbishop 
Laud, of the Methodist John Wesley. The 
name of Campbell, or of Wesley, or of 
Laud, or of Calvin, was once the great 
name that eclipsed the Lord Jesus. Now 
the name of Jesus Christ fills the whole 
sky. This means that the Sabbath and 
Christ's Church are for teaching about God 
and Jesus Christ. Parents at home can 
teach their children about Wesley and Laud 
and Calvin on week-days, but Jesus Christ and 
God are so great that they demand every 
minute on Sunday. In other words, the 
temperamental things belong to the family 
and the parent; the universals of Church 
and Sunday belong to God and Jesus Christ. 
This is revolutionary — this destroys the basis 
of probably 165 out of the 169 denomina- 
tions — this would leave perhaps one great 
Protestant Church, one Roman Catholic 
Church, and one Church named the Quaker, 
that would not believe in any form, but only 
in the uncontrolled life of the spirit. 

Fortunately these statements are not 
dreams : they are history. No man any 
longer can say these suggestions are im- 
practicable, for the reason that they have 
already been adopted in a number of com- 

2IO 



Unity and Church Consolidation 

munities. Indeed, denominations are at last 
coming together. Plans are now being 
consummated that look to the amalgama- 
tion of the Congregation alists, the Method- 
ist Protestants and the United Brethren, 
which would mean the union of about one 
million one hundred thousand Christians. 
In Canada, the Methodists, Congregation- 
alists, Baptists, and Presbyterians have come 
together and arranged that if one denomi- 
nation has a church in the new northwestern 
territory, into which settlers are rushing, 
the other three denominations will ask their 
members to unite with that one church. 
This means that in a generation there will 
be but one church in Canada. Already in 
Australia and New Zealand the churches are 
federated. In England, during the last few 
years, all the Protestant bodies, save the 
Episcopalians, have united in one great 
Nonconformist union. The Moderator of 
the Congregational Churches of America, 
believes that our Presbyterian, Congrega- 
tional, and Baptist churches can unite so as 
to strengthen all, without losing any char- 
acteristic or idea or institution fundamental 
to only one. The Congregationalists repre- 
sent English Puritanism ; the Presbyterians, 

211 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Scotch Puritanism ; the Baptists are Con- 
gregationalists who believe in immersion. 
But many Congregational churches have 
already put in baptistries, and many Con- 
gregational parents dedicate their children 
to God in baptism, and rebaptize them in 
youth, when they unite with the church on 
profession of faith. 

Still, progressive as the existing move- 
ment is, it does not go far enough. All the 
Protestant churches can unite without loss 
of anything distinctive. There are gains in 
the beautiful liturgy of the Episcopal Church, 
in its ordered service, its unified, solid, and 
compact organization. Followers of John 
Wesley, one of the greatest minds and the 
greatest hearts that ever lived, have vindi- 
cated their position — " Whosoever will may 
come " ; salvation is a personal experience. 
The followers of Calvin have established 
their view, and, so far as the rule and 
will of God are concerned, His provi- 
dence is the gulf-stream of history, and 
He does overrule all things for good. It 
is perfectly evident that there can be no 
unity on the old lines. There can be no 
intellectual unity that comes by imposing 
one creed on all intellects. The ritualist 



Unity and Church Consolidation 

seeks unity by reciting the same prayer ; 
the externalist seeks unity by a common 
method of baptism, or a common method of 
church polity. Those who emphasize gov- 
ernment seek unity by tracing everything 
to the same head and ruler of the church. 
But this is sameness and not unity. It se- 
cures the likeness of a sand-heap where all 
the grains are the same, and will remain so, 
because all are dead. But change the grain 
of sand into a blade of grass or a leaf, and 
you will find that life works a larger differ- 
ence. The true unity in the church of Jesus 
Christ, therefore, is in the simplicities that 
Jesus teaches, manifest in the divergences 
of individual temperaments. It is the har- 
mony of unlikeness, the grouping of dis- 
similarities. In the high school, or college, 
we have one class-room where literature is 
taught. But one of the pupils will become 
an artist, one a poet, one a novelist, one an 
historian, one an orator, and all will unite 
to give us American letters. 

In the great communal church there is 
unity. A prophet teaches us the illimitable 
love of God and His dear Son, Jesus Christ, 
and these simplicities fuse the multitudes 
into one solid band of disciples on Sunday. 
213 



The Fortune of the Republic 

But on Monday, in practical life, the differ- 
ent temperaments will work out their lives, 
fulfill their tasks, or career, by different 
methods of activity. 

With many delays, with diverse differ- 
ences and discussions, this movement is now 
going forward. But the tides are piling up 
like waters behind a dam, and the move- 
ment will soon break through every ob- 
stacle. The ten thousand rural communities 
in the great West, where the village is di- 
vided, and filled with discord, will be- 
come unified. The brightest intellects, the 
strongest young men in the college will 
enter the ministry. Every community will 
embody in splendid and noble architecture 
its church life. The musical and artistic 
genius of the entire community will be or- 
ganized and unified. The church will be- 
come the social centre, the joy, the pride, 
the delight of the whole community. What 
ought to be will be. God has time enough 
and to spare — and strength also. Once the 
workmen about the great cathedral filled 
the air with strife and bickerings, while 
they carved the statues and lifted the cap- 
stone to its place. At last the strife has 
died out of the air, the noise hushed itself 
214 



Unity and Church Consolidation 

to silence, but the cathedral lives on. Now, 
under the dome of the building, the dis- 
puting workmen are assembled on the in- 
side, and ten thousand songs and voices on 
the floor beneath are gathered up, united 
and blended into one strain of music, to 
Him whose cross is the centre of the dome 
of God. Men are uniting their dreams, 
unifying their hopes, reorganizing their as- 
pirations and their plans, and when all is 
complete, we shall have in this Republic a 
unit church — with the unity of the faith and 
the unity of the knowledge of the Son of 
God. 



215 



IX 

The True Solution of Social 
Problems 

One of the hopeful signs of the times is 
the universal interest in the social prob- 
lem. Gone forever the era of selfishness, 
when the individual exists for himself alone, 
considers his own advancement, his own 
offices, his own advantage. Events have 
compelled the recognition of the solidarity 
of society. The sound business, rightly 
conducted, enriches the individual, but be- 
cause he is honest and honourable, it also 
enriches the state. The individual is a thread 
in the coat, and no thread exists for itself 
alone, but has its dignity and place because 
of the texture that holds it. The Christian 
man of every generation has affirmed that 
nothing is foreign to him that concerns his 
fellows. 

But now has come an era when even the 
secularist and the mere pleasure-lover, living 
for to-day, recognizes that individual happi- 
ness and progress mean social happiness, and 
216 



The True Solution of Social Problems 

the well-being of all. The time was when 
the baron, during the winter's storm re- 
treated, into his castle, shut the great door, 
pulled down the curtains and by the light of 
his blazing fire carried on his feasts, while 
the peasants, out in the night, starved and 
perished in the storm. But that old prin- 
ciple of "the devil take the hindmost," is 
now death-struck and dying. More and 
more men are knitted in with the interests 
of their kind. The happiness of our Thanks- 
giving feasts comes from the feeling that 
all other homes are filled with the Thanks- 
giving glow and joy. We cannot enjoy our 
banquet if others gnaw crusts and starve. 
Our mansion loses its attraction when we 
know that others live in rookeries that ooze 
disease, that fairly sweat malaria, that breed 
death, because their tenements have been 
built by lying contractors. 

And this sentiment of social obligation is 
so strong, that we have lost admiration and 
respect for men whose vast wealth repre- 
sents disobedience to the laws of the coun- 
try and of God. Society still pays homage 
to these men because of the financial power 
they wield, but it is the homage that one 
pays to the buzz saw ; it is the reverence 
217 



The Fortune of the Republic 

that we give to the tornado against which 
struggle is useless ; it is the admiration that 
we give to an earthquake, whose power for 
ruin we must confess, but whose desolation 
we fear and hate. I^ow and then a cheer 
arises for the man who has spoiled the 
people of their wages, and having robbed 
the people of much, seeks to buy a little in 
return, and win society's forgiveness by en- 
dowing some school or institution. But the 
cheers are very faint and feeble. In their 
hearts men despise the giver, attach no value 
to his gift, know that his institution itself 
shares in the taint of his gold. And the 
moment the man dies, the feeble cheer will 
stop, and his name will be as dead as the 
name of the veriest pauper in the street, and 
low down and besprinkled with mud, it will 
be found at the very base of the tablet. For 
the people have come to recognize that the 
individual who enriches himself at the ex- 
pense of the people has spoiled the people, 
and that the man who advances himself 
through breaking the laws of brotherhood 
and the laws of God, is debauching the 
people. As never before, men are trying to 
cure all social ills, and ameliorate social 
distress. 

218 



The True Solution of Social Problems 

Fortunately, Christ has done something, 
and for that reason, encourages the hope 
that He can do more. All will confess that 
His example and teachings have destroyed 
gladiatorial games, ended the old idea of 
woman as a chattel, exalted childhood, ex- 
tended education, founded homes and 
asylums for the unfortunate who once were 
killed, and taught the obligation of strength 
to weakness. But there are still great social 
ills to be overthrown. The ills of drink, the 
social evil, the selfishness that expresses 
itself through economic conditions that 
breed poverty, the wrongs of those who live 
in the tenement-house regions, the sorrows 
that come through bad government and 
those who promote bad government and 
seek to enthrone bad men as governors that 
they may use them, the wrongs of the 
sweaters and of the child-labourers, of the 
orphans and the waifs in the street. These 
evils are vast, big with peri], big with destiny. 
Either we must destroy these evils, or these 
evils in turn will destroy us. 

Now drunkenness, impurity, poverty, the 
bad housing of the poor, selfish govern- 
ments administered for class-ends, graft, 
running through every grade of society, 
219 



The Fortune of the Republic 

represent the social problem. And good 
men who love their kind are groaning and 
travailing with pain. They cannot bear to 
go out of life, leaving all these sorrows be- 
hind them. Our editors are talking about 
the social problems, our business men are 
thinking about them, our authors are writ- 
ing about them, and at last the time has 
come, when, if the people knew the measure 
that would cure the ill, that measure would 
instantly be adopted, and the new and ideal 
commonwealth be set up. 

Let us confess that the instrument for 
fighting all social evils is the social vision 
of the ideal commonwealth. Social reform 
is half done when it is well begun, and it is 
well begun when the reformer knows ex- 
actly what he wants to do. That is why 
every new social epoch begins with a new 
dream of social happiness. That also ex- 
plains the fact that the poet and prophet 
are the true progenitors of progress. The 
poet gives the vision of liberty, and con- 
vinces the soldier that that vision is worth 
fighting for, and then the hero with the 
sword fulfills the poet's dream. Every age 
has had its dreamer and its vision. 

Let us recall some of these beautiful 
220 



The True Solution of Social Problems 

visions. Here is the dream of Plato and 
his Republic: the city is Athens, the 
social ill is ignorance, and the method of 
reform is wisdom and knowledge. Here is 
the dream of John : the city is Jerusalem, 
the social ill is iniquity and the cure is 
righteousness. Here is the dream of Dante : 
the book is the Paradiso, the new city is 
Florence, the social ill is ugliness and squalor, 
the method is beauty, through cathedral and 
gallery and palace. Here is the dream of 
Sir Thomas More : the book is the Utopia, 
the city is London, the social ill is servitude 
and oppression, the cure is liberty through- 
out the whole life. Here is the dream of 
Karl Marx : the book is Capital, the ill is 
poverty, the cure is the common ownership 
of all instruments of production, of all 
wealth produced. Here is the new Secular- 
ism, allied with Agnosticism : the ill is the 
narrowness of life through poverty, the cure 
is the increase of comforts and conve- 
niences, until there is abundance for all. 
Here are the legislative dreams ; the ills are 
through bad laws, the cure is through legis- 
lation, the method is the decree of the 
statute. Here are those who emphasize 
political action, in the organization for a new 



The Fortune of the Republic 

system of taxation, for a new form, of tariff, 
or a new political party, with better men. 
All these represent the dreams of those who 
love their fellows, have an ambition to right 
all wrongs and cure all social distresses. 
We can never be too grateful for those who 
have written of the ideal commonwealth. 
They were the noblest spirits of their time. 
They were voices for the deep, wistful, eager, 
passionate longings for an ideal life, in an 
ideal city. Wonderful the poets and proph- 
ets who fashioned these dreams, and in 
retrospect we now see that the social in- 
struments equal to the social emergencies 
have been invented. Plainly, there is phil- 
anthropy and reform and method and wis- 
dom enough for men to use, and we need 
only a dynamic to support us in their use. 

But having affirmed the wisdom, and 
beauty and function of these dreams of the 
new Golden Age, we must also confess their 
failure. Be the reasons what they may, we 
must confess that apart from Christ all the 
schemes of social salvation have collapsed. 
The libraries hold no books sadder than the 
words of these dreamers in the hour of 
failure, when they realize that the scheme 
has not succeeded and they have awakened 



The True Solution of Social Problems 

to their shattered illusions, to find all their 
life-hopes and plans lying in ruins about 
them. Witness the words of John Eichard 
Green. For nine years Mr. Green, as a 
Unitarian minister, lived in the East End, 
amid the Whitechapel folks of London. By 
every form of institutional device, by classes, 
by clubs, by lectures, by culture-schemes he 
sought to lift the people: but at last, broken- 
hearted, he writes, " It is all a failure. Men 
will go on betting and drinking till the 
flood," and so Mr. Green returns to his 
study of the past, and writes the History of 
the English People, because men were not 
worth working for. 

And here are the socialistic schemes, from 
Brook Farm through to the last failure in 
Tennessee, where the leader moans that every 
man wants an easy job, and that Socialism 
succeeds only where there is one man in it 
who acts the part of a despot, and rules the 
rest with a rod of iron, which, the socialist 
adds, is not socialism, but despotism, for 
only when the social scheme is curved until 
it turns to absolute monarchy, does it suc- 
ceed. And here is the secularist. Mr. 
Pearson, speaking for his school, tells us 
that abundance and the rescue of the people 
223 



The Fortune of the Republic 

from poverty have failed ; that the income 
of the average family is ten times what it 
was in Shakespeare's era, but that drunken- 
ness, and theft, and suicide, and murder, and 
social unhappiness have not been extermi- 
nated by material wealth. 

And here is that Russian Jew, a nihilist, 
over in the tenement house region, the 
Ghetto of JSTew York. He has a beautiful 
character, he has been devoted to his people, 
he has maintained his night-school, and all 
the institutional features of settlement-work, 
for twenty years. But the other day, when 
a gentleman went to see him, and asked 
him if the settlement-work had cleansed the 
Ghetto, he made answer: "All my boys 
have graduated from these classes to go to 
the policy rooms, and many of my girls are 
in the disorderly houses." The questioner 
exclaimed against this, and said it could not 
be so. These plans of social amelioration 
could not be a failure. But the old Jew, 
w4th his beautiful face, sprang up, seized 
his hat, and shouted, " If you do not believe 
it, come with me." Leading the student 
into one saloon, the white-haired nihilist 
said: "Good-evening, John." Going into 
the policy shops, he went from boy to boy, 
224 



The True Solution of Social Problems 

calling them by name. Leading the student 
into a disorderly house, he went from one 
girl to another, speaking her given name. 
And the old teacher exclaimed : " It is all 
a failure. The strong boys and girls of am- 
bition and of moral worth would rather die 
than to take a crumb from me. They are too 
proud to receive help. The weak ones come 
to have things made easy, but these are the 
very ones who are hurt by having things 
made easy. So that I work for the social 
detritus, the residuum — the foam at the top, 
the dregs at the bottom. And when certain 
men come forward who are strong, these 
bright Hebrews go to yonder music-hall on 
Sunday morning, to listen to another Hebrew 
lecture on ethical culture, and the naked ab- 
straction does nothing to regenerate the 
men who listen, and they go away, and on 
Monday steal the very coppers off the eyes 
of the dead men among my poor people in 
the Ghetto." Oh, it was a piteous state- 
ment, this old nihilist's insistence that his 
social scheme had collapsed, that his reform 
was a failure. 

And here Herbert Spencer himself, with 
his dream of the unity of all knowledge is 
hopeless. This great man fears that the 
225 



The Fortune of the Republic 

individual is to pass under an eclipse, that 
the state, in assuming all functions of gov- 
ernment, is dwarfing and stunting the man, 
that the genius and creative power are be- 
ing dried up at the very springs by the so- 
cialistic trend. Mr. Spencer was a leader, b}'' 
universal consent, and if you wished to talk 
with some one in the evening hour of life as 
to the outlook for society, the future of the 
republic, and to go over our hopes and fears 
for free institutions, with what man would 
you rather counsel than with Mr. Spencer ? 
And yet, in his depression, in the preface to 
his last book, Mr. Spencer told us that he 
very much doubts whether the world has 
been made any better by a single page that 
he has ever written. 

'Not less striking the failure of the Beauti- 
ful to save men. Do any of you still cherish 
Dante's dream ? Well, England has the 
cathedrals, the beautiful music, the stained 
glass, the noble litany, and right in the 
shadow of the cathedrals a population as 
ignorant and sodden and sin-steeped as the 
Hottentots, and as brutish as the cattle in 
Smithfield market. Take the men with 
their economic theories. Once free-trade 
was going to save England, grand old Eng- 
226 



The True Solution of Social Problems 

land, steady England, giving us the seed- 
corn of our liberties: and lo, after sixty 
years of free trade, Mr. Chamberlain says it 
has been a failure ; that there are four 
millions of people in Great Britain who re- 
ceive state-help, and approximate the con- 
dition of paupers, and his new panacea of 
social salvation is "protection." But we 
live in a city that has had protection for 
sixty years, and if Mr. Chamberlain should 
come over here we should have to confess 
to him that during the last twelve months 
in the City of New York 772 persons in 
Brooklyn and New York have cut their 
throats, drank poison, or used a pistol for 
self-destruction, while we have some thir- 
teen thousand murders each year in our 
country, much drunkenness, impurity, the 
wrongs of sweaters, the sorrows of child- 
labourers, the evils of graft in municipal gov- 
ernment. Our generation has witnessed 
many new schemes of social salvation, but 
all are reducible to and only emphasize 
the various great schemes to which I have 
made reference. 

All these plans hold much truth ; each one 
gives some form of wisdom ; each is a com- 
plement to the half -statements of the others ; 
227 



The Fortune of the RepubUc 

we cannot afford to dispense with any of 
them. But, alone, each is a failure. In 
order to be workable, they assume the 
Christlike man. Mr. Wallace says that he 
does not know of any theory of evolution that 
does not require the presence of an infinite 
and personal God to make it workable. All 
these social schemes are good, yet not one 
of them but asks for the living Christ, to 
lend perpetual encouragement to the worker, 
for without Him, the engine waits for the 
steam to smite the piston, the motor waits 
for the electric current, the sails wait for 
the heavenly wind ; there is only one motive 
to reform that is perpetual, the indwelling 
Christ, the sense of His constant presence, 
and the enthusiasm for the poor that comes 
from the realization that the weak, the 
hungry, the broken-hearted, are His little 
ones, and that in giving a cup of cold water 
unto them, we do it unto Him. 

But if these schemes of social reform have 
failed, have they not failed because the Lord 
of all has not stood in their midst ? He, too, 
had His dream of the city of God. He, too, 
beheld the woe, the sorrow and the desola- 
tion of the poor and oppressed. And be- 
cause the sword would not save the city He 
228 



The True Solution of Social Problems 

went to His cross and gave Himself in vica- 
rious service and love. If ethical phi- 
losophy is only a naked abstraction, there 
is One who is called the living Christ, sup- 
porting the worker amid his toil. And what 
is the germ of His reform ? He lays His 
finger upon the naked soul. To all selfish 
ones, seeking their own interests at the ex- 
pense of their brothers, He says. Ye must be 
born again. For the old, hard heart that 
squeezes one's brother as the hand squeezes 
a cluster of grapes, He gives the spirit of 
brotherhood, of love and sympathy. With 
the new life on the inside come the new 
habits, the new method of living in the 
street, the market-place, on the outside. 
The truant hates his books, but the teacher 
who awakens a new enthusiasm for knowl- 
edge does not have to legislate for the boy 
or coerce the boy or force knowledge into 
his unwilling mind. Arouse the love of song, 
and the youth will write symphonies; stir 
his love of the beautiful and he will paint 
pictures ; quicken his inventive faculty, and 
he will create tools ; arouse the love of 
liberty and the hatred of oppression, and he 
will destroy political abuses. And Jesus 
Christ came to give the soul life, more 
229 



The Fortune of the Republic 

abundantly; life, until each individual is 
equal to all his own crises, — until he has 
strength that overflows, strength to spare 
for generous service. 

But having sweetened and deepened the 
springs of power for the individual, and 
made all right within, then the new and 
strengthened faculties are made right with- 
out, through the law of brotherhood. Jesus 
laid His hand upon the purple of the 
prince and the rags of the pauper, and upon 
the brow of each wrote the word " Brother." 
He uttered no word against slavery, or the 
exposure of children, or gladiatorial games, 
or political abuses, or the method of tax- 
ation. Nevertheless, in unveiling this law 
of brotherhood, He really consumed all 
these exterior abuses of His time, for that 
law of sympathy and friendliness destroyed 
these sins, as the law of sunshine eats aAvay 
the ice in a thousand brooks and rivers. 

One day He took a child in His arms, and 
said ; " Of such is the kingdom of heaven. 
It is not the will of your Father that one 
of these little ones should perish." JSTow 
it seems that one of the disciples of Plato's 
Kepublic had been arguing for the exposure 
of sick and maimed children, as did Cicero 
230 



The True Solution of Social Problems 

and Seneca. But when the disciples heard 
Jesus say that the angels of the children 
do always behold the face of the Father, 
they went out under the influence of this 
law of brotherhood to collect orphans, the 
babes exposed on the mountain-tops, and 
brought them into homes; and therefore that 
beautiful sketch in the catacombs of the 
white haired apostle stretching out his hands 
to welcome a group of crippled children, to 
whom he is telling the story of Jesus Christ, 
God's fatherhood and divine love. 

So also, without talking about gladiatorial 
games, did Jesus deliberately set about des- 
troying them. In these words, " Do unto 
others as you would have others do unto 
you," was a weapon that made the might of 
weapons ridiculous. The soldiers in the Coli- 
seum stood behind the gladiators and urged 
them into strife with red hot irons. And 
the gladiators, ready to die, sang, "We 
who are about to die, salute you," and flung 
themselves upon death. But, once these 
soldiers understood that the gladiators were 
their brethren, once that golden rule of love 
had sounded for them, once they had re- 
ceived for themselves a new heart, then 
that heart rode forth in sympathy, and took 



The Fortune of the Republic 

its stand beside the brother gladiator. And 
in a moment the games became murder, the 
joy of beholding the strife became the agony 
of another's suffering. Soon the great 
Coliseum that held eighty thousand specta- 
tors was empty. The marble steps that 
led from gallery to gallery crumbled away ; 
the rain that fell like God's tears washed off 
the stains of blood, and the grasses and 
vines hid the wounds that cruel men had 
made. Not otherwise was it with all the 
abuses of that era, such as slavery and serf- 
dom, and the exposure of aged parents, and 
the casting out of the blind and the lame and 
the invalided. That golden law of love, 
sympathy and friendly service, transformed 
the social life and changed the face of the old 
Eoman world. 

Jesus Christ is the greatest social reformer 
that the world has ever known, and His 
reforms have worked. When He cures an 
abuse it stays cured. Already in the past 
He has destroyed seven great social evils. 
And He still stands in the centre of the 
city, — the bearer of the city's sorrows, the 
"divine patriot of the kingdom of God, 
whose patriotism was pure of all selfish- 
ness, who wept over His city, not because it 
232 



The True Solution of Social Problems 

was subject to Eome, but because it was 
subject to sin, for if it were only subject to 
Eorne, it might be saved by a sword, but a 
city subject to sin, and an age subject to 
selfishness can be saved only by His cross." 

If now we apply Christ's emphasis of 
the individual, the sancitity of life, and 
have found in the new heart the hidings 
of power, and in individual excellence the 
secret of influence, and if in this great law 
of friendiness, sympathy and brotherhood, 
we have found a genial atmosphere, in 
which all the social truths and excellences 
are ripened, how does Christ's principle 
bear upon great social problems of our own 
day? 

Here is the labour-problem. Jesus Christ 
never tried to do away with labour. He 
knew that work is happiness, that work is 
culture, that work is growth, that creative 
work is medicinal and curative. We found 
the schools and colleges from which a few 
graduate, and they are useful, and another 
handful graduate from the universities ; but 
God has His college, into which He matric- 
ulates us all — the school of hard work. He 
throws us upon our own resources, compels 
us to earn our own livelihood, makes hunger 
233 



The Fortune of the Republic 

to scourge us forward, makes the fear of old 
age to inspire industry and tireless exertion. 
What we work for is our daily bread, but 
what we get is our character. Like the 
prince who sent his son into the foreign 
land to be drilled in the care of the troops 
in the palace: the boy thought he was 
working for a handful of gold a year, for a 
wage, but the reward he received was the 
rule over a palace and a kingdom. God 
appoints us each our temperament, our task, 
sets us in our place, gives each man his stint. 
What is all this talk about shortening the 
hours of work and killing time? Wise 
men want to save time, not kill it. Great 
men want to lengthen the hours of work, 
not shorten them. The inventor, the poet, 
the statesman, the lover of his fellows, the 
mother — these all rise up early and steal 
every golden minute they can from sleep, 
and the one boon they ask from God and 
death is a few more golden hours in which 
to work. Oh, what a misfortune our coun- 
try has suffered, and what wrongs have 
been done the labouring classes by these 
foolish superficial leaders, who have spoiled 
life of its dignity, stolen the glory from the 
tool, made the task contemptible, taught the 
234 



The True Solution of Social Problems 

labourer that his work is a degradation, that 
he must shorten it, and flee from it, even as 
he hates his employer! But Jesus Christ 
chose the carpenter's life — a manual trade, 
and deliberately passing by the professions 
He inured Himself to hard work. My 
Father worketh, and I work, He said. To 
every man his work. Work, for the night 
Cometh. And, once a man bows before the 
cross of Jesus Christ, once he understands 
that he is a child of two eternities, that he 
is here not to "get on," but to do God's 
work, that he is to be self-sufficing, that he 
is to prefer another to himself, then all life 
becomes sweet, work is a joy, the hours on 
golden wings fly o'er us. All the wage is 
the reward that comes from the sense of 
God's approval. This has always been 
Christ's solvent of the problem of work ; 
it is the only salvation of the labour-question. 
And if it were adopted it would in a gen- 
eration double the wage, end the strife, 
crowd all the factories with contracts, fill 
all homes with contentment. Christ knows 
the path that leads to social peace. 

But when the individual's problem of work 
has been solved, then comes the problem of 
service. If the worker is to be just towards 
235 



The Fortune of the Republic 

his employer, what about the employer's 
sympathy and brotherhood towards his 
workmen ? A great orator, who was not a 
Christian, once conceived in the spirit of 
Christ this law of brotherhood. In his par- 
able there were three Ten Talent men. The 
first one was a professional philanthropist. 
God gave him genius to touch ore and turn 
it into steel ; to touch oil and turn it into 
light ; to front a mob and turn them into an 
industrial army. When he found that he 
knew a thousand times more than the people 
around him whom he called the herd, he 
asked the king to let him have control of 
some five thousand people, and the king per- 
mitted him, because he knew that this great 
organizer could take better care of the peo- 
ple than they could of themselves ; then, 
with the assistance of a few soldiers, he took 
them out to his factory-town, divided them 
into groups, built for them houses, each one 
like the other, made them work so many 
hours, made them sleep and exercise so 
many hours, built them a theatre, built them 
a church, forced their lives into regularity, 
and at the end of ten years he found that 
these people had not only had better houses 
and better food than before, but that he had 
236 



The True Solution of Social Problems 

made twenty per cent, on his investment, 
and told his friends that it was the greatest 
social scheme on earth. The people were 
incapable of taking care of themselves, so he 
took care of them, and not only bettered 
their conditions, but bettered them, and in- 
cidentally made a fortune. And when the 
man died he was buried with great cere- 
mony, and on his tomb they put the words, 
" The Protector of the People." But after 
the man's death, the people left his tomb to 
crumble, the parents taught their children 
to curse his name. They preferred a crust 
that was their own to his largess that be- 
littled them as paupers, and when a genera- 
tion had passed by all people understood 
that this benefactor had debauched the 
people. 

But there was another Ten Talent man. 
God gave him also the power to touch ore 
into steel and oil into light, and the execu- 
tive skill to turn a mob into an army. This 
man hated slavery, and wanted his work- 
men, he said, to be free. His favourite prin- 
ciple was to get all you can, to keep all you 
can, and the devil take the hindmost. When 
hard times came on he cut the wage in the 
middle, and when the men said that they 
237 



The Fortune of the Republic 

could not support their families, he said: 
" If you don't want your job, leave it ; there 
are plenty of men who want it." His favour- 
ite saying was, " The poor you have always 
with you." Many of his workmen lived in 
close rooms, had large families, little to eat, 
but the great man felt that God gave him 
his superior genius to get things for himself, 
and the One Talent people must look after 
themselves. Hard times, therefore, and 
epochs of panic became epochs of harvest to 
him. This man saved an enormous fortune. 
He rose from poverty to wealth beyond the 
dreams of avarice. He founded museums 
and colleges, and when he died they put up 
this inscription : " He Lived for Others." 

But after he was dead the people would 
not go to his museums ; they cared little for 
his colleges ; they told their children that 
he was selfish through and through. His 
name was remembered only for contempt 
and shame. 

There was a third man to whom God 
gave genius as a Ten Talent man. He, too, 
could change a desert into a garden and a mob 
into an industrial army. But his favourite 
sentence was, " I will get all I can honestly 
though productive industry ; I will keep all 
238 



The True Solution of Social Problems 

I can and regard the rights of my brothers, 
and instead of letting the devil take the 
hindmost, I will take the hindmost." When 
from his great factory, therefore, through his 
workmen who had come to love him, he 
found that he had made half a million dol- 
lars, he turned to these workmen and said, 
substantially, "Much of this I will give 
back to you as a free gift. I might keep it 
and build a college with it, but I want you 
to have it as your wage, and send your boy 
to college and your girl to the schools. I 
want you each to have a library in your own 
house, because as workmen you have earned 
the money for it. Instead of taking the 
wealth that you have created with your 
contribution, and I have created with my 
contribution, to found some institution that 
will take my name and blazon my fame, I 
prefer your love and the love of my brothers. 
God gave me industrial genius, but He gave 
it as a trust-fund, that I might save my 
brothers, as Christ used His life for His 
brethren. God gave men talent to feed the 
state and clothe the state, as He did to the 
soldier to keep the state in liberty, or the 
poet to keep it in hope, or the jurist to keep 
it in justice." 

239 



The Fortune of the Republic 

!N"ow when this man died he left no money, 
because he had used it for his brothers, and 
his grave was unmarked, but the people 
planted it around with flowers. They took 
their children there, to borrow inspiration 
from his grave. They wept bitter tears over 
the death of their friend. They love him 
and cherish his memory with all but idol- 
atry. In their distresses he has been their 
saviour. This man had learned Christ's 
method, and his wealth was no " wrecker's 
handful of corn, gleaned from the beach to 
which was beguiled an argosy, a camp 
follower's bundle of rags, unwrapped from 
the breasts of goodly soldiers slain. His 
wealth was no gilded index of far-reaching 
ruin. His benefactions left at death were 
not like a river that overflowed the land, to 
poison the wind, its breath pestilence, its 
waters bitter, its breath famine, but it was 
a goodly river that flowed in soft and gentle 
irrigation through the field " — the river that 
fed the trees of life and happiness, the river 
that carried upon its bosom the fleets of 
prosperity and commerce, the veritable river 
of the water of life. 



240 



X 

The Message of Puritanism 

For full two hundred and seventy years 
and more have men assembled upon Fore- 
fathers' day to celebrate the landing of the 
Pilgrim Fathers ; to revere their virtues, to 
sympathize with their sufferings, to recall 
the thrilling story of their first winter upon 
the bleak coast of New England ; to marvel 
at their victory over the wilderness, famine, 
winter, disease, savages, and death itself, 
and for themselves and their children to 
swear anew fidelity to their fathers' God, to 
law and love, to liberty and learning, that 
these sacred fires may not die out upon the 
altars of the human heart. On this high 
day, in scores of cities in our land, in church 
and hall, and around the banqueting board, 
the sons and daughters of the Puritans 
through oration and eulogy, in song and 
story, recall the famous men of old, with 
wit and laughing jest, indeed, hitting 
off their fathers' foibles, but in the secret 
heart reverencing their ancestors and emu- 
241 



The Fortune of the Republic 

lating their example — since thus alone we 
prove that we are not the ignoble sons of a 
noble heritage. For, if the giants of mis- 
rule and despotism may be forgotten, no 
race can afford to forget its heroes. God 
raised up the famous men of yesterday as 
soul-food and stimulus for the youth of to- 
day. Standing at Plymouth Eock, Webster 
looked up towards the fathers, that he 
might himself be lifted to their level. 
Lingering long upon those shores, where the 
first pilgrim stepped foot upon this new 
world, Webster uncovered his head and joy- 
fully confessed that the patriotism, forti- 
tude, and faith of the heroes had entered 
into his soul, as iron enters into the rich 
blood of the physical system. The faith of 
the fathers is, indeed, " the elixir of the 
children." 

Looking back upon our history, we now 
do see that the Puritan spirit and principles 
first conquered New England ; that the 
ideals and institutions the Pilgrims devel- 
oped soon repeated themselves in New York 
and the Keserve of Ohio, and afterwards 
journeyed into the towns and cities of our 
great North and West. Then, when the 
civil conflict came and the whole land shook 
242 



The Message of Puritanism 

with the earthquake of civil war, it was the 
Puritan spirit that again went forth in 
battle array to conquer servitude and make 
our soil too pure for the feet of slaves. To 
thinking men it must now be evident that 
the time is surely coming when this entire 
land is to be puritanized. As loyal patriots 
and true Christians, we may also look for- 
ward to an era when our republic shall edu- 
cate the world in free institutions. Should 
that time ever come it will be found that all 
the nations will recall Forefathers' day as 
one of the great days of history, and cele- 
brate the qualities of the Pilgrims with ad- 
miration, awe, and tearful sympathy. " If 
we succeed," said that first intrepid leader, 
" if we succeed, men will never cease to cele- 
brate this day with song and story." Con- 
trariwise, should the spirit of the fathers 
fail, " should the consciousness of a divine 
energy underlying human societ}^ mani- 
fested in just and equal laws, and humanely 
ordering individual relations, disappear," we 
may believe with Curtis, " the murmur of 
the ocean rising and falling upon Plymouth 
rock will be the endless lament of nature 
over the baflded hopes of man." 
Now that long time has passed, all men 
243 



The Fortune of the Republic 

see that the age of the Puritans was the 
heroic age of our history. In its innermost 
genius the story of the Pilgrim Fathers is a 
story unparalleled in all the annals of his- 
tory for the weakness of its beginning and 
the glory and grandeur of its victory. To 
the end of time, Xenophon's march of the 
Ten Thousand will fascinate mankind. But 
the young Grecians were soldiers, men of 
iron strength. They marched not towards 
the wilderness, savages, and certain death ; 
they marched towards life, home, and all- 
welcoming love. With absorbing interest 
also we follow the adventurous career of 
Cabot and Drake, Ponce de Leon, De Soto, 
and Champlain, in their search for new 
realms for their sovereign or for gold and 
gems and the treasures hidden in the palaces 
of Peru, for fountains of eternal youth, and 
for the fame that has ever beguiled brave 
men. But no dreams of power or wealth 
allured these Pilgrims forth. Our heroes 
unfurled their sails to leave behind gold, 
lands, ancestral halls, and resigned forever 
all thoughts of ease and luxury. 

To us it seems incredible that in the very 
years when Shakespeare was writing his 
greatest dramas, English rulers could have 
244 



The Message of Puritanism 

been so bigoted as to burn the wisest 
scholars, behead the thinkers, and imprison 
resolute souls, whose only crime was the 
love of liberty in thought and word and 
worship. And yet in those far-off days, inde- 
pendent thought was a penal offense, and 
the worship of God in any way, save that or- 
dained by the King, was more likely to be 
punished than murder or theft. In the Brit- 
ish Museum men have preserved an auto- 
graph letter of Queen Elizabeth, written to 
the Scottish King, and asking for the extra- 
dition of one John Penry. Now, Penry was 
a graduate of Oxford, a scholar of great at- 
tainments, a man of the noblest life and 
character. He had been guilty of the crime 
of saying that a clergyman might be or- 
dained by a presbyter as truly as by a bishop, 
and, therefore, once Queen Bess got her 
hands upon her enemy, she had him indicted 
for treason. Standing before the Lord Chief 
Justice, Penry said : " If my blood were an 
ocean sea, and every drop thereof were a 
life unto me, I would give them all for the 
maintenance of my convictions." But the 
best use that England could make of such 
a man was to behead him ! Soon the Puri- 
tans felt that the time had come when they 
245 



The Fortune of the Republic 

must decide whether they should live under 
an absolute or a limited monarchy ; whether 
or not a king might also assume the func- 
tions of a pope. And when one scholar and 
leader had been imprisoned thirty-six times 
in seven years, and fifty of the leading Puri- 
tan pastors and scholars were lying in the 
dungeons of London, the Pilgrims decided to 
leave the old home land and cross over to 
Holland, a land made glorious by the valour 
of " William the Silent " ; made free by the 
fortitude and faith of the heroic burghers, 
who endured the siege of Leyden, the cruelty 
of Alva, and the awful tyranny of " Philip 
the Monster." 

When eight fearful years had passed over 
the factories and fields of Leyden, a com- 
pany of them decided to seek a permanent 
home in the new unknown world of Amer- 
ica. A thousand times through stately 
oration and thrilling narrative have our 
orators and editors rehearsed for us the 
story of that unique voyage. We see the 
Pilgrim band marching down to the sea- 
shore. There they kneel upon the sands, 
and, weeping, commend themselves to God, 
while John Kobinson asks Him who holds 
the seas in the hollow of His hand to 
246 



The Message of Puritanism 

care for their little craft and bring them 
into some harbour of peace. Returning in 
the little ship Speedwell to Southampton, 
they were joined by others like-minded, and 
set out upon their uncertain voyage with 
firm faith. Taught by our artists, we see 
these brave men assembled in the cabin 
of the Mayflower to sign their compact and 
covenant. And when after more than five 
stormy, weary weeks the little ship has tossed 
upon the tumultuous sea, on the shortest 
day of all the year, midst drifting sleet and 
snow, while water freezes in men's garments 
and makes their coats to ring like iron, we 
see two little boats pull through the surf at 
Plymouth, and, jumping into the water, the 
men take the women and children in their 
arms, and carry them through the surf to 
the shore. 

What dangers were theirs, when the first 
flight of arrows fell upon them from the 
Indians ambushed in the forest ! How pa- 
thetic the stern record of that first Christ- 
mas morn in the new world I " On Monday 
the twenty-fifth we went again on shore, 
some to fell timber, some to saw, some to 
rive, and some to carry; so no man rested all 
day." What sorrow and suffering are re- 
247 



The Fortune of the Republic 

vealed in the fact that when the next De- 
cember came, half of the little company were 
sleeping beneath the winter's snow ! As 
once that Scottish hero, fleeing from his 
enemies, sprang over the precipice above the 
sea and clung to a narrow ledge of rock, 
while his enemies above pelted him with 
sticks and clubs, so this frail band clung to 
the edge of the forest, while hail and snow, 
famine and pestilence harassed and assailed 
them. There on the woodland border we 
see the Pilgrim rearing his cabin, for the 
family is the first of his free institutions. 
We see him dedicating his little church and 
on Sunday morning standing before it as a 
sentinel, with rifle in his hand, keeping 
guard over wife and child while they worship 
God in peace. We see him completing the 
first schoolhouse and calling a meeting of 
the citizens to pass a law that when there 
are a hundred families they shall be taxed to 
fit the sons for college and found a university. 
We see them coming together to publicly 
discuss all questions of government in the 
town-meeting, that was to be the germ and 
seed of all our social institutions. Yerily, 
these were "famous men, by whom God 
248 



The Message of Puritanism 

hath gotten glory," of whom " the world has 
not been worthy." 

Of late years it has become the fashion to 
belittle the Puritans and ridicule them. Our 
pleasure-loving generation hurls many a 
gibe and stinging jest at their high hats and 
sombre garments, their cold reserve, their 
solemn habit of thought and life. There is 
a type of mind that can never think of the 
Puritan save as "mere acrid defiance and 
sanctimonious sectarianism," nor of the Puri- 
tans save as a band of " ignorant and half- 
crazy zealots." With biting sarcasm, Hume 
said the Puritan hated bear-baiting, not be- 
cause it gave pain to the bear, but because 
it gave pleasure to the spectator. While in 
America, when Connecticut expelled a Tory 
for disloyalty, he went home to palm off 
upon credulous England the so-called " Blue 
Laws " — laws which never had any existence 
outside of the brain of a man who had been 
exiled for treason. And yet many an 
English author still refers to the time when 
the mothers of New England were punished 
for kissing their husbands or babes on the 
Sabbath day, and when the Puritan house- 
wife threw away the vinegar on Saturday 
?49 



The Fortune of the Republic 

night, lest the acid should " work " on Sun- 
day, thus breaking the law against labour on 
the day of rest. 

We smile also at Judge Sewell's diary, 
written after going home from church and 
listening to a sermon in which the minister 
had turned the hour-glass four times, on 
the coldest winter day, in a church where 
no fire was permitted. The journal begins : 
" Extraordinary cold ; storm of wind and 
snow. The bread was frozen at the Lord's 
table to-day. Though 'twas so bitter cold, 
John Hutchinson was baptized. At six 
o'clock my ink freezes so that I can hardly 
write by my good fire. Yet," adds the 
judge, "I was very comfortable at the 
meeting to-day " — subterranean fires having 
doubtless been opened up by the preacher. 
The fathers also are criticised for lack of 
sympathy with art and beauty, and the 
elegancies of life. Some, too, insist that 
the Puritans sympathized deeply with that 
iconoclastic spirit that spoiled the cathedrals 
of England and of the Continent, white- 
washing the frescoes, pulling down the 
altars, smashing the precious statues. 

Let us confess that they were men with 
faults, many and great. To minimize their 
250 



The Message of Puritanism 

errors or magnify their excellences would 
be alike unworthy of their memory and our 
inheritance. Their theology was narrow, 
and has in part ceased to satisfy thinking 
men. Their stern thought towards the 
Hester Prynne of the " Scarlet Letter " has 
been succeeded by a certain tender, gentle, 
throbbing sympathy ; to the rock-like stern- 
ness of virtue, we have added charities and 
sweet philanthropies, that embody God's 
tenderness towards each " bruised reed." 
But, faulty as they were, be it remembered 
that there is some spot on every shaft of 
marble, some flaw in every pearl and dia- 
mond, some disproportioned feature even in 
the loveliest face. 

For, criticise him as we may, we must go 
back to the Puritan for the foundation of 
our social happiness and peace. If these 
men of granite were cold, be it remembered 
that the mountain peaks that are crowned 
with white snow are not low-browed. 
If the Puritans were simple folk and with- 
out the graces of the modern drawing- 
room, be it not forgotten that Doric temples 
have their beauty through a column that rep- 
resents a simple shaft of white marble. Our 
heroic fathers doubtless were different from 
251 



The Fortune of the Republic 

their children. But what if the generation 
of Bradford and Brewster differs from ours, 
as warships differ from pleasure-yachts, as 
great organs differ from harps and music- 
boxes, as the oak and pine differ from the 
vines that cover them ? If the Pilgrim 
Fathers were not ideal men, neither can 
their children lay claim to that high honour. 
]N"or will the ideal man ever come until one 
rises up who, to the severe virtues of the 
Puritan adds the grace and sweetness of 
modern life, carrying his strength up to 
beauty, inflecting sternness towards sym- 
pathy, clothed with integrity that is spot- 
less indeed, but having also sweet allure- 
ment. Happy indeed the man who, within 
the granitic qualities of law and justice 
conceals the amethystine qualities of affec- 
tion and sympathy in the heart. Not until 
Puritan and Cavalier unite in one man, who 
bends for coronation before Christ, his di- 
vine master, will the perfect man appear. 

In his eulogy upon John Brown, Wendell 
Phillips said that Lord Bacon, as he marches 
down the centuries, may put one hand 
on the telegraph and another on the steam- 
engine and say, " These are mine, for 
I taught you to invent." Could we as- 
252 



The Message of Puritanism 

semble in one room earth's greatest sons, 
who have achieved much for liberty and 
progress, and could the Puritan spirit pass 
from one son of goodness and genius to 
another, few would be found in that goodly 
company who did not belong to the group 
called Puritan. For long before Puritan- 
ism became an outer cult it was an inner 
spirit and a potent influence. 

It was the Puritan instinct in Moses that 
led him to resign the splendours of the pal- 
ace in Egypt, choosing rather the rigours of 
a life in the desert. It was the Puritan spirit 
stirring in Daniel that led him to stand 
forth alone, braving a throne and its de- 
crees that he might worship God after the 
manner of his fathers. Paul showed the 
Puritan spirit when, fettered and a prisoner 
before Felix, he lifted his chains and boldly 
indicted the King upon the throne and 
brought the tyrant to his trial. Socrates 
had the Puritan spirit when he braved the 
Athenian jury and said : " It is better to die 
than to refuse to obey the voice within." 
Galileo was not a Puritan in the hour when 
he recanted, but a spark at least of that 
faith showed in him when he muttered 
under his breath, " JSTevertheless, the earth 
253 



The Fortune of the Republic 

does move." Savonarola, too, had the 
Puritan valour. When the Pope tried to buy 
him off with an offer of the cardinal's hat, 
he replied that rather than sin against his 
convictions he would receive the red hat of 
martyrdom. Luther had a like intrepid 
temper when he said that he would go to 
Worms and front the Emperor though there 
were " as many devils in the streets as tiles 
on the roofs." Cromwell was a Puritan 
when he went forth to destroy that citadel 
of iniquity called the divine right of kings, 
and razed to the ground the ancient castles 
of England that long had been the strong- 
holds of feudalism. The Puritan temper 
also dominated Milton when he wrote the 
noblest plea tiiat was ever made for the 
freedom of the press. Pobinson was a Pur- 
itan in the hour when he foreshadowed our 
toleration, in the words, " There is more 
light yet to break forth from God's word." 
It was the Puritan spirit also that spoke in 
Garrison, " I am earnest ; I will not equiv- 
ocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a 
single inch, and I will be heard." It was 
the Puritan spirit that lent power to the 
polished shafts of Wendell Phillips ; that 
lent a deep moral purpose and passion to 
254 



The Message of Puritanism 

the orations of Lincoln and Beecher and 
Sumner and Curtis; when Gladstone also 
stood forth to plead the cause of Ireland's 
poor against England's power and wealth, 
it was the old heroic faith of the fathers 
that flamed forth in the famous son. It is 
not too much to say that the history of 
modern liberty is the history of Puritanism. 
If now we analyze the qualities that lent 
the Puritan his power and influence, we 
shall find that his crowning characteristic 
was his faith in the unseen God. In words 
that have the roll of thunder, Macaulay, in 
the most eloquent page he ever wrote, has 
portrayed the vision of God as the hidings 
of the Puritan's power. " The Puritans," 
said the essayist, " were men whose minds 
had derived a peculiar character from the 
daily contemplation of eternal interests. 
Not content with acknowledging in general 
terms an overruling Providence, they habit- 
ually ascribed every event to the will of the 
Great Being for whose power nothing was 
too vast, for whose inspection nothing was 
too minute. To know him, to serve him, to 
enjoy him, was with them the great end of 
existence. . . . They recognized no title 
of superiority but his favour; and, confident 
255 



The Fortune of the Republic 

of that favour, they despised all the accom- 
plishments and all the dignities of this 
world. If they were unacquainted with the 
work of philosophers and poets, they were 
deeply read in the oracles of God. If their 
names were not found in the registers of 
heralds, they were recorded in the Book of 
Life. If their steps were not accompanied 
by a splendid train of menials, legions of 
ministering angels had charge over them. 
Their palaces were houses not made with 
hands; their diadem, scrowns of glory which 
should never fade away. On the rich and 
the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they 
looked down with contempt ; for they es- 
teemed themselves rich in a more precious 
treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime 
language, nobles by the right of an earlier 
creation and priests by the imposition of a 
mightier hand. . . . Death had lost its 
terrors and pleasure its charms. . . . 
Enthusiasm had made them Stoics . . . 
and raised them above the influence of 
danger and of corruption. They went 
through the world like Sir ArtegaPs iron 
man. Talus, with his flail, crushing and 
trampling down oppressors, mingling with 
human beings, but having neither part nor 
256 



The Message of Puritanism 

lot in human infirmities, insensible to fa- 
tigue, to pleasure and to pain, not to be 
pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood 
by any barrier." 

Happy — thrice happy — our generation, 
could we exchange some of our tools, our 
knowledge of bugs and beetles, our outer 
embellishments, for the temper and spirit 
of the fathers ! Because they worked " un- 
der their great taskmaster's eye" they 
needed no paid overseer to see that they 
slighted no task ; no timekeeper to see 
that they came not late nor went early ; 
no lynx-eyed reformers to search out their 
accounts for sinful entries. They lived in 
God's presence, as the flowers live and un- 
fold in the soft enfolding sunshine, as birds 
sing when the morning rolls in warm billows 
o'er them. 

" The times that have ceased to believe in 
God and immortality," said Mazzini, " may 
continue illogically to utter the holy words, 
* progress and duty,' but they have derived 
the first of its basis and robbed the second 
of its sanction." And when our fathers' 
faith in God shall go, when we become ma- 
terialistic and bow down to a mud god, and 
live by ethics of pleasure, not duty, then 
257 



The Fortune of the Republic 

justice will forsake the laws our fathers left 
us ; liberty will fade from our institutions ; 
the glory will depart from library and 
chapel ; our music will lose its sweetness, 
and our canvas its lustrous colour ; ipe&ce 
also will pass forever from the American 
home. For the loss of faith in our fathers' 
God would be the most disastrous loss that 
ever befell the young republic ; just as the 
victory of our fathers' faith is soon to be the 
sublimest history in the annals of time. 

To the vision of God that like a pillar of 
cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night led 
the Puritan forward, let us add the emphasis 
of civic righteousness and the recognition of 
conscience and duty rather than pleasure 
and selfish gain. Though the Cavalier called 
him a dreamer and an idealist, the Puritan 
held firmly to his faith that the ideal repub- 
lic would come when the law of Sinai and 
the Sermon on the Mount were organized 
into the laws of the market place and city 
hall. E"ot Plato in his "Atlantis," not 
Thomas More in his " Utopia," not the 
modern dreamers of ideal cities have 
dreamed so noble a dream of the ideal com- 
monwealth as these Puritans who laboured 
to set up the kingdom of God upon eartho 
258 



The Message of Puritanism 

These grim, stern men have been praised 
for their valour, kneeling down to pray be- 
fore they entered the battle of Naseby or 
Marston Moor — who were never defeated, 
and never wounded in the back. Admirable 
as was their physical bravery, their moral 
courage was even more significant. How 
unique that scene in the Puritan Parliament ! 
Carlyle shows us five hundred English gen- 
tlemen, members of Parliament, who, upon 
the opening day, after taking the oath of 
office, fell upon their knees and besought 
God for their country. Afterwards they 
healed all enmities, and, striking hands as 
brothers, forgave and forgot all wrongs and 
ingratitudes. And then, testing each pro- 
posed law by the rule of right and conscience 
and God, they presented their bills for dis- 
cussion and adoption. What if to-morrow, 
when Congress assembles, that Puritan 
scene should be repeated ? What if every 
ruler who has done wrong should first go 
away to make restitution and clear his 
record, and afterwards return to do justice 
and plead the cause of the poor ? 

Our age does not need more tools, luxu- 
ries, or comforts so much as it needs the 
fathers' sense of righteousness and justica 
259 



The Fortune of the Republic 

During the past year two hundred towns 
and cities of a sister State have been black- 
ened with murder, where man has slain his 
brother man in the streets. And to-day, 
while we sit here, the ministers in that Stato 
have been asked to cry aloud against this 
wave of sin and crime. What meant it that 
in many of the little Puritan towns the 
first hundred years of their history was 
stained with the record of never so much as 
a single murder ? What meant it that these 
little communities had no poorhouse, no jail, 
no tramp, no drunkard, and that in 1690 a 
sheriff in one Puritan community proposed 
the abolition of his office, because in his four 
years of service he had never had a single 
duty to perform ? It matters little what we 
think of the Puritans. It matters much 
what Bradford and Brewster, what Yane 
and Hampden and Cromwell and Pym, 
think of us and our era of lawlessness and 
crime. 

Standing close beside the anniversary of 
that far-off winter's day when our fathers 
first stepped foot upon these new shores, let 
us with reverence and holy hope swear anew 
fidelity to our fathers' faith and to the insti- 
tutions they have bequeathed us. To-day 
260 



The Message of Puritanism 

our generation is rich indeed, through a 
thousand treasures that have come down out 
of the past. But our greatest treasure is not 
the tools of Watt and Arkwright, not the 
philosophy of Bacon or Newton, not the 
poems of Shakespeare or Milton : the greatest 
boon our generation possesses is the religious 
and political liberty that our Puritan fathers 
gave us. The battles they won will never 
have to be fought again. Never again will 
kings try to pass an act of uniformity in 
worship ; liberty of thought and speech and 
act are our eternal possessions. Never again 
will the colleges and universities be closed 
to all save the patrician classes; the great 
institutions that represent the rights of the 
common people are now surely fixed as the 
mountains. But if the blossoms of Qur tree 
of liberty are crimson they are red with our 
fathers' blood. If our institutions bear a 
royal stamp, they are stamped with our 
fathers' signatures. Those who won for us 
our institutions have the right to expect that 
we shall transmit them unimpaired and 
greatly enriched to the next generation. 

The memory of our fathers to-day should 
consecrate us, their approval should be our 
benediction. We fulfill a noble instinct 
261 



The Fortune of the Republic 

when we remember the famous men of old 
of whom God hath begotten us. We, too, 
are Saxons, and therefore the sons of Milton 
and Hampden and Cromwell. We, too, are 
Puritans, and therefore the sons of Bradford 
and Kobinson and Brewster. We, too, are 
Americans, and therefore the sons of Adams 
and Webster and Lincoln. Unto this genera- 
tion there sounds forth the word : 

Lord God of Hosts, be with ns yet, 
Lest we forget — lest we forget ! 



262 



XI 

The Universal Note In Christianity 

In the final instructions of Jesus to His 
apostles, recorded in the last chapter of 
Mark, — "Go ye into all the world and 
preach the evangel,"— He forecasts final tri- 
umph of the evangel of God's love. His 
kingdom is to be a universal kingdom, and 
His sway world-wide. Passing over all race 
prejudices. He offers His evangel to all men, 
as men, and not as Hebrews or Gentiles; 
offers it to all men who are born into the 
cradle and who journey towards the grave. 
The note He strikes is not the Hebrew note, 
it is the human note. Come soon or come 
late, victory is to gather all nations and 
tribes under the banner of God's love and 
Christ's sway. Governments are many in 
form, but eternal justice is one. Houses 
are of many styles of architecture, but the 
genius of all homes is love. Manifold the 
churches, varied the creeds, diverse the pol- 
itics, but at last unity will come, offering one 
name— Our Father; one law — The Golden 
263 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Eule; one petition — the Lord's Prayer; 
one dynamic of personal life — the cross of 
Christ ; one hope — the hope of immortality. 
The vision of world-wide supremacy is 
beautiful, but what if it be only a vision ! 
Humanly speaking, there never was so uii-;/ 
likely a candidate for universal fame. Men 
often spake of Jesus' birthplace, but no man 
ever called Bethlehem the mother of the arts 
and sciences, that title belonged to Athens. 
Many travellers have commented upon Naza- 
reth's wickedness as the headquarters of the 
Koman legion, but no one ever associated it^ 
with law, or government. The world-race 
was the Roman race ; but Galilee was a lit- 
tle, despised province. Jesus' class was the 
artisan class ; His lot was a carpenter's shop ; 
His sphere, obscurity. And yet Jesus en- 
courages world-plans — talks of world-vic- 
tories, and sends His disciples out upon a 
world-mission. He promises to fulfill in terms 
of institutions the hopes and dreams of the 
poets and prophets. He looked forward to 
an era when, in peace and plenty, every man 
should sit under his own vine and fig-tree. 
Little wonder that men have spoken of the 
sublime audacity of Jesus ! His disciples did 
not think it audacious. To them there was 
264 



The Universal Note in Christianity 

nothing strange, nothing unnatural, nothing 
that jarred, in Christ's world-wide plans. 
Such a victory and sway seemed the one 
thing that would be in harmony with Jesus' 
sinless life, exalted character, and glorious 
resurrection. With instant readiness, there- 
fore, they leaped into the breach and set 
forth on their world- widei^mission, challeng- 
ing persecution and martyrdom, in their 
purpose of carrying to all men the evangel 
of God's love, and building the city of God 
on the brink of the demon city. 

If Christianity is to be a world-religion, 
plainly it must strike the universal note. 
There is a broad distinction between that 
which is local and temporary, and that 
which is universal and permanent. For ex- 
ample, home is a universal idea that will 
abide ; the bark hut of a Fiji Islander is 
local, adapted to a tropic climate, and not 
interesting to us. In literature, there are 
certain epics that hpld the universal note. 
Homer strikes this note in the Iliad, where 
he deals with the ambition of Agamemnon, 
the resentment of Achilles, the heroism of 
Hector, while in the scene where the Trojan 
soldier bids farewell to his beloved ones, 
the little child lifts up its hands to stroke 
265 



The Fortune of the Republic 

the plumes that fall from the father's hel- 
met, shouting aloud in its delight. But 
heroism, fidelity, jealousy, war, fickleness, 
love, hopelessness — these are universal notes. 
Science also throws new light upon the uni- 
versal element. For example, the physi- 
ology that is written for Oxford students 
will describe just as well the physical or- 
gans of people in Africa or India, for all 
have bones and muscles and nerves, and 
lungs and heart. A psychology written for 
an American student is just as useful for 
the class-room in Arabia or Egypt, for all 
men have intellect, memory and judgment; 
have imagination and volition. An astron- 
omy^ written by Herschel would do fairly 
well for students in Mars, if such there 
should chance to be, for gravity is a uni- 
versal law and to the uttermost parts of 
our system the planets go round the sun. 
Not otherwise is it with religion. If Jesus' 
music is a world-music, if His reign is to be 
a universal reign, He must strike the uni- 
versal note. He must not speak to men as 
Hebrews or Greeks ; He must speak to men 
as men, of whom the outer pigments as 
white or red or yellow are only skin-deep. 
And unless the universal note is in His 
266 



The Universal Note in Christianity 

teachings, and the eternal melody in His 
music, it is for a day, and not for all time. 
Our theme, therefore, is this — the universal 
note in Christianity, that prophesies a world- 
wide supremacy. 

Religion begins with prayer. If God 
speaks to man in revelation, man must in 
return be able to speak to God in prayer. 
Under whatsoever name, all men, high and 
low alike, pray. Man's strength is broken 
like the reed, man's wisdom cannot pierce 
the veil that hides the next hour. Man's 
best resolutions avail not in the battle and 
stress of temptation. Man's first and last 
prayer is the confession of need. For the 
strongest man an hour comes, when the 
world reels beneath his feet, and he wants 
a divine bosom and friend on whom to 
lean. But what prayer shall man pray? 
If Christ is to be a world-teacher, He 
must be a world-guide in prayer above all 
else. Here analysis to prove that what 
we call " the Lord's Prayer," is fitted to 
every temperament and race is rendered 
unnecessary, because we can make the ap- 
peal to history. 

Some years ago I was in Oxford, and 
spent an hour in the library of Max Muller. 
267 



The Fortune of the Republic 

The World's Parliament of Religions had 
but recently closed, and the great Orientalist 
was full of the subject. He insisted that 
the event was the greatest event in the 
history of religion, since the birth of Christ. 
Thoughtless men were saying of the Fair, 
" How marvellous this assemblage of the 
physical resources of civilization I How 
beautiful this Court of Honour! How 
wonderful these looms! What art and 
architecture ! " But not so Max MuUer. All 
these material things go to the waste-heap 
when new tools are invented. Man's great- 
est possession is not his tool in the hand, 
but his faith and hope immortal in the 
heart. Well ! Suppose that Professor Max 
Muller was right. What was the great 
hour in the World's Parliament of Relig- 
ions? It was this hour. Just before Dr. 
Barrows opened the Parliament, he called 
the delegates together. In that company 
were Buddhist priests from India, and 
Brahmins from Ceylon, bright with their 
turbans and brilliant with their many- 
coloured robes ; priests from Japan, teachers 
of Confucius from China, representatives of 
the Greek Church from Athens, scholars 
from Upper Egypt and Lower Arabia, 
268 



The Universal Note in Christianity 

Three men were there who professed the 
faith of Mahomet, and many varieties and 
schools of Christianity represented. How 
was the Parliament to be opened ? In that 
hour a Brahmin was ready with the an- 
swer. He said that for years he had called 
the Lord's Prayer the Universal Prayer. 
And then, to the astonishment of everybody, 
it was discovered that Jesus had struck the 
universal note in prayer. And so, these 
Buddhists from Japan, the Brahmins and 
Parsees from India, Jewish rabbis. Gentile 
teachers, bishops of the Greek Church, prel- 
ates of the Roman Catholic, ethical teachers, 
all alike, bowed the head, and were gathered 
into one comprehensive petition, universal 
in its inclusiveness. For whatever was true 
in all these broken lights was gathered up 
and perfected in Jesus. What Jesus Christ 
and Christianity ask for is a few Parlia- 
ments of Religion. It seems, therefore, 
that the note of justice in all governments 
is not more necessary than the universal 
note of prayer that will meet the spiritual 
wants of all the races. 

If Christianity is to be a world-religion, 
it must meet a need that is universal among 
all the peoples — the need of a new heart. 
269 



The Fortune of the Republic 

If the literature of the various nations 
teaches anything, it teaches the universality 
of sin. Professors of theology in the semi- 
naries seem to think that they have a mo- 
nopoly of total depravity. Would to God 
that they had ! But, unfortunately, this 
doctrine, so dear to some hearts, represents 
a universal fact. Witness Seneca : " No 
virtue like truth and justice is natural to 
man. Magnanimity must be acquired." 
Does not the great Koman hit off your ex- 
perience ? For surely your heroisms and 
self-sacrifice have not come unasked, nor 
do they stay unurged. Witness Socrates : 
"Some men sin less, and some sin more. 
But evil is wrought into the very texture of 
our soul." Witness the universality of the 
sacrifices. Witness Cornelius, the Roman 
centurion, who had found Christ without 
having learned the Saviour's name, but who 
was deeply conscious of his sins. Well, if 
the sense of sin is universal then there must 
be a Saviour from its power, and the old evil 
heart must become a new pure heart. What 
the world wants, therefore, is a new life. 
The man who hates needs a new heart, so 
that he can love. The man who has suffered 
from an enemy and wants to kill the trans- 
270 



The Universal Note in Christianity 

gressor for his ingratitude, needs a new 
heart of magnanimity. The man who lives 
to self needs the new heart of self-sacrifice. 
And that is what science is trying to com- 
pel us to understand. The scholars insist 
that life comes from preexisting life. If 
you will boil the water, and kill every germ, 
and seal it tightly, the scientist will tell you 
that even after a million million years there 
will be no life there. The theory of self- 
originating life has gone to the limbo of 
exploded superstitions. 

What, then, shall be the source of this 
required new life ? "Where shall sinful 
man look for the Saviour from his sin ? It is 
in this need that we recognize the universal 
element in Christ as teacher, example and 
Saviour. What a man wants is some one 
who will lift him out of himself. The races 
ask for a Saviour who stands upon the earth 
indeed, but also one whose forehead touches 
the stars. He who reconciles man in his 
need and sinfulness to the righteous God, 
must be Himself a link between heaven and 
earth. Little wonder that in retrospect that 
figure hanging yonder where the sky and 
earth-line meet hath stretched up His hands 
to grasp the feet of God, while His own 
271 



The Fortune of the Republic 

pierced feet lend sanctity to our earth. 
So wondrous is the Christ in the glory and 
beauty of His life that the earth, out of 
whose elements His body was made, may 
well shine like a star that ought to be re- 
deemed. In His character He is the uni- 
versal man, — the one true cosmopolitan. 
We never think of Him as essentially 
Hebrew ; the red and yellow and black 
races never remember that He was white ; 
but all the races, when they behold the 
beauty of His face, exclaim : " Lo, He 
whom I have long desired ! " What virtue, 
that is not supremely perfect in Him ! 
What heroism I What fortitude and moral 
courage! What victory over poverty! 
What tenderness to childhood ! What gen- 
tleness to the broken-hearted ! How did 
He breathe hope into the hopeless hearts ! 
The little child may come, the great patriot 
in his victory, and the martyr in his defeat ; 
the dying mother and the falling statesman 
may stretch their hands to Him. In the 
darkest night He whispers that the path 
in which our world passes is starlit; that 
God is nigh ; that the gate of hope is never 
closed ; that the hours that sweep us on 
carry us towards hope ; that God is always 
272 



The Universal Note in Christianity 

on the side of the transgressor, who turns 
with his eyes blinded with tears to re- 
trace his steps, and find the way home. 
Other names are great, but to whom shall 
we liken the man of Galilee, who hath 
journeyed forth from Bethlehem to trans- 
form the earth? Little wonder that to 
Him the great and small from every quarter 
are turning their faces I And the way in 
which He meets the universal need, and 
saves all souls, prophesies His coming 
victory. 

Jesus stands forth also, carrying full 
power to make all souls great. Having 
given ideals to men, He stands ready to 
lend these ideals power to journey out into 
all the earth. His religion is no hot-house 
affair, it is a summer climate that makes 
goodness and greatness indigenous. What 
the races want is some philosopher that will 
smash egotism, and make it shrivel up and 
pass away. No religion can be a world-re- 
ligion, that is not deeply altruistic. The 
world-system must take an individual, and 
lend him a surplusage of manhood and 
cause his heart to be like the palm tree in 
the desert, that having ripened leaves for 
itself, ripens dates for every passer-by ; must 
273 



The Fortune of the Republic 

be like the tropic orange, that having be- 
come beautiful in its own place, stores up 
a surplus of perfume, so that its sweetness 
can ride up and down the streets in a chariot 
of air ; must be like a river that overflows 
to feed cities and civilization before it leaps 
into the sea. Now this is exactly v^hat 
Christ is. He had extra goodness and 
greatness and spilled them over on His dis- 
ciples ; then He lent them extra goodness and 
greatness, and they overflowed upon little 
children who were ignorant, upon the sick, 
the lame, and the blind, and asylums were 
built ; and so through all the centuries, 
Christ has constantly been changing timid 
Peters into moral heroes, selfish Sauls into 
city-building Pauls. Our sun rolls forward 
with changeless diameter ; from the astron- 
omer's viewpoint it seems a small ball of 
fire. But go in any direction away from 
the sun for millions of miles and you are 
conscious that the sunbeam is travelling on 
like a strong man to run a race. Oh, won- 
drous figure, that touched our earth at 
Bethlehem, that communicated to man's 
progress an impulse that has never died 
away ; oh, beautiful spirit, that setting forth 
from Bethlehem has journeyed across our 
274 



The Universal Note in Christianity 

earth like a beautiful civilization I Outgrow 
Jesus and the evangel of God's love ? How 
can an ignorant pupil outgrow a great mas- 
ter? How can a slave-child outgrow the 
noble emancipator ? When sailors outgrow 
the north star, and its need on a dark night, 
then, and not till then, will the world out- 
grow the evangel of God's love and the 
cross of Jesus Christ. 

But this prophecy is fast becoming his- 
tory. These victories of Christianity are all 
but innumerable. Every morning one must 
waken to read the reviews and home and 
foreign press, lest one miss some world- 
achievement. Is it Japan ? Her fame is in 
the world. But fifty-four years since, her 
law threatened any missionary or foreign 
merchant with beheading. And now listen 
to that Japanese admiral who at a meeting 
the other day in Detroit, described a bat- 
tle in the Sea of Japan and his part in it, 
and ended by saying that for twenty j^ears 
he was secretly a Christian, and now openly 
one, and that all his sons and daughters 
shared his faith. How beautiful his elo- 
quent plea for more teachers, and his tribute 
to the Christian faith that he thought had 
done more for his land than commerce and 
275 



The Fortune of the Republic 

science ! Is it China ? Eead Mr. Chang, 
secretary of the special Chinese embassy, 
who is here studying American politics, 
prior to the proclamation of the new Chinese 
constitution : " When these special ambas- 
sadors shall have finished their labours and 
submitted the draft of the constitution, 
China will step out of the rank of absolute 
monarchies and enter that of constitutional 
governments." Is it rapidity of growth 
that you seek ? Then remember that news 
has just come from one of our churches and 
stations in the province of Canton, where 
fifteen hundred men and women have united 
with the church on profession of faith in the 
last nine months. Is it India you are 
thinking about ? Eemember that one station 
has in fifteen years grown to thirty thousand 
members. Is it Africa ? Up in Uganda, 
where Sir Henry Stanley started the first 
mission, his one teacher has in twenty-one 
years become seven hundred places of wor- 
ship, with two thousand teachers, physicians, 
evangelists and preachers. And these black 
men have just built a cathedral in Mengo, 
their capital. The building was constructed 
by the native Christians, under the direction 
of a missionary engineer. Kow these men 
276 



The Universal Note in Christianity 

work for Christ. All that they have is 
His. 

Plainly, another half-century and two or 
three continents will have been born, as it 
were, in a day. You may help the progress 
of this work, but try as you can, you cannot 
hinder it. Young men, what part are you 
to have in this great enterprise ? Are you 
investing your whole life in this high service? 
Have you consecrated your gold ? Do you 
look upon your salary as His ? Oh, I some- 
times wonder whether the heroic note is to 
pass to the working-people, and to these 
once despised folk of foreign lands. Their 
achievements and their self-sacrifice make 
me ashamed for my church, for myself, and 
for my country I Are men losing power to 
surrender themselves to great causes? Is 
this generation to repeat the mistake of the 
old generations of dead cities, by simply 
pursuing the things of self and pleasure ? 
Whenever culture begins to exist for its own 
sake, the scholar becomes selfish, and his 
wisdom is manna that rots. Whenever a 
business man pursues success and gold for 
himself, his money rusts ! Oh, you need not 
tell me about the pull towards money-getting. 
I know the story. Have I not seen five 
277 



The Fortune of the Republic 

ministers, of about fifty years of age, with 
their faraiHes dependent upon them, driven 
out of the ministry because the church gave 
them a beggarly pittance, on which they could 
not send their children to college, while they 
went into business to earn five times the 
salary ? Do I not know the college presi- 
dent, who built a splendid institution in the 
West, and became a nervous wreck, through 
work for others, and at sixty was dropped, 
and wrote me the other day from a ten-cent 
lodging house in New York, having in three 
months exhausted his little savings ? And 
yet he is a gentleman and a scholar, and 
lives and has always lived the highest and 
best life. Are there not three hundred 
ministers in a single denomination in and 
about New York, whose salary is less than a 
thousand dollars a year ? Business men 
have quadrupled their incomes in twenty 
years, but left the salary of the minister just 
where it was. I know a church in an adjoin- 
ing State that has a man on its board of 
trustees worth twenty millions, who asks 
one of his mission-workers to toil for eight 
hundred dollars a year, and who knows 
that these workers have hardly the bare 
necessities of life. 

278 



The Universal Note in Christianity 

I am ashamed of the selfishness of wealth. 
These men always ask others to do the sacri- 
ficing. These men who live on the gifts and 
talents bequeathed them by noble Christian 
parents, who betrayed their convictions 
years ago, and have not had a dollar's equity 
in their own souls for ten years, and whose 
every pore is stamped with a dollar mark, 
come to me and say that they are so glad 
that I am in favour of keeping up the schools 
and missions and clubs, and holding Ply- 
mouth Church down in a region that has 
become foreign. Oh, yes, they know that 
there are sixty thousand poor foreigners in 
this end of the city, and these foreigners 
must be Americanized, and they want me to 
keep guard over them, while they steal a 
bank or run off with a railroad. Their Sun- 
days are for the automobile and banquets, 
and getting ready for a horse-show, for eat- 
ing and drinking and lounging, while other 
people teach childhood, labour from Sunday 
morning to Sunday night in schools and 
clubs, seeking to bear the burdens of the 
poor and the weak. 

It is even worse in politics. I notice that 
one multimillionaire has criticised our 
borough president, who is about to retire. 
279 



The Fortune of the Republic 

He thinks it is a terrible thing that a gifted 
young man should give himself to the law 
and practice of justice. He asks what is to 
become of the city and state if our young 
men of light and leading desert the political 
arena ? Well, here is a city that loads its 
most prominent public official with heavy 
duties, asks him to submit to a thousand 
calls, expects him to work by day and night 
to solve the greatest problems that can come 
to bear upon a public servant, problems of 
transportation and light, and heat, and 
water, and streets and public utilities, and 
then pays him a comparative pittance of 
seven thousand five hundred dollars, when, 
perhaps, he might earn forty in the law. 
But meanwhile, what about the college-presi- 
dent's family ? What about the minister's 
future ? What about the public official's to- 
morrow, when the millionaire asks the one 
to do all the sacrificing, so that he may save 
enough to buy a new thousand-dollar carriage 
or have another five-hundred-dollar recep- 
tion ? 

Oh, all ye young hearts, beware of the 
atrophy of heroism ! Happiness is in life. 
The number of high thoughts and noble re- 
solves we have I I take you to witness that 
280 



The Universal Note in Christianity 

I have never flattered men that I might use 
them, or withheld my convictions that I 
might keep them in my pews. Life without 
liberty is not worth living. With the years 
lying before you, consider well your plans. 
Build your life into the great things of 
Christ and His church. All things else 
whatsoever will go. Only eternal truth and 
character abide. What if you do grow tired 
on Sunday, teaching in your classes ? It is 
not at all necessary that you be an athlete. 
One thing is necessary, that while you do 
live you fulfill your duty and your divinely 
appointed task. It is not of the slightest 
importance whether you are poor or rich. 
One thing is important, that while you live, 
you live as a patrician gentleman, filling 
your life with service for man's sake and 
God's sake. Whether your gifts be many 
or few, give them to God ! Work, here ! 
There will be time to study, there. Here 
and now, do you serve ! Fall into the ranks 
of Christ's advancing army and His world- 
movement. Give your wisdom, give your 
money, here and now. Give your intellect, 
give your beauty, give your all to your 
Saviour, for man's sake and for God's saka 



281 



XII 

The New Ideal Commonwealth 

In what we denominate the Lord's 
Prayer, we have the social programme of 
Jesus. This prayer contains Christ's vision 
of the city of God, and the coming Golden 
Age. That which He prays for, to God, is 
that towards which He is working for men. 
What He wants God to send us from heaven 
is what He believes will bring happiness to 
the earth. If, by divine fiat, Christ's prayer 
had been instantly answered, the millennium 
would instantly have descended into the 
earth. For here, in miniature form, is His 
whole plan of individual redemption and 
social reconstruction. 

Sincere prayer is simply our highest ideals 
and noblest visions rushing into verbal 
form. Enlarge a seed and you have the 
shock ; develop the babe and you have the 
sage and statesman; expand the fire-mist 
and you have a habitable world. Not 
otherwise does the Lord's Prayer hold the 
mother-ideas of all social institutions that 
282 



The New Ideal Commonwealth 

are related to a perfect age. Enlarge the 
Lord's Prayer and expand it, and you have 
John's vision of the new city of God and 
the ideal commonwealth. Condense John's 
vision of the city of God, and you have the 
Lord's Prayer. 

In the old Greek myth is the story of 
the growth of our beautiful world. The 
god on Mount Olympus sits beside a 
stone jug. Waving his wand a cloud of 
smoke issues, expands into a golden mist, 
breaks up into stars and suns, and soon a 
world, with hills and valleys, is spread out, 
at the foot of the mountain. It was the 
Greek poet's way of describing how God 
made little things to be large. In Christ's 
prayer, we have in the small the social 
teachings that give us an ideal society ; for 
His is mother-speech, world-thinking, and 
the answer to His prayer means that every 
man shall sit in peace under his own vine 
and ^g tree, enjoying the fruits of his own 
garden. 

" Our leather, who art in Heaven.^'' Ko 
one knew better than Jesus that that word, 
" Our Father," contained the germ of politi- 
cal and social revolution for His age. Jesus 
was not a destroyer, coming to break the 
283 



The Fortune of the Republic 

institutions as a potter's rod breaks the 
earthen vessel. The rather, His teachings 
descended on men like the dew that blesses, 
and not like the hail that breaks. His 
social ideas came slowly, like the rise of the 
dawn ; not swiftly, like the stroke of the 
lightning and the earthquake. The early 
conception of God had been of a world-force, 
then of a world-mind. The spring of these 
ideas was in the intellect, and its effect was 
culture. The source of Christ's conception 
was in the heart, and its result was charac- 
ter and conduct. He knew that the mili- 
tarism and political autocracy could not en- 
dure among men who had learned that 
fatherhood was the final idea and revelation, 
in the conception of God. He fully under- 
stood that men who could truly say, " Our 
Father who art in heaven " would soon add, 
" our brothers who are on earth." If God 
is our Father, then the world is the great 
family home for all God's children who are 
brothers. These brothers who dwell under 
the same great rooftree must not injure the 
rooms in the world-house by wars. Brothers 
must not engage in feuds and in cruelties, 
directed the one against the other. God is 
our Father and all we are brethren. That 
284 



The New Ideal Commonwealth 

meant that there soon would be no more 
slavery, for brothers do not enslave each 
other, nor brand each other's hands with hot 
irons, nor make fetters for each other's 
feet. 

God is our Father, and men are His chil- 
dren : that meant, no more exposure of little 
orphans, no more neglect of brothers who 
were blind, or deaf, or halt. God is our 
Father : that meant no more feuds in eccle- 
siasticism, with one man, a Jew, standing 
within the Holy Place, and enjoying all 
special rights and privileges of communion, 
and the other, a Gentile, standing outside of 
the heavenly pale. 

That great word. Father, also meant the 
rewriting of all theology, for it meant that 
a Father instead of a judge was on the 
throne ; that the Incarnation is the last and 
crowning revelation of God's heart; that 
the cross reconciles man to God, instead of 
reconciling a God of anger unto men in 
need ; that the end of redemption is charac- 
ter and likeness of the son to the Father, 
and the result of punishment, regeneration 
instead of retribution ; that all chastisements 
and sorrows are medicinal and full of mercy ; 
that God is love, because He is the Father, 
285 



The Fortune of the RepubHc 

and that in His ceaseless solicitude for men 
He neither slumbers nor sleeps. 

What revolutions in human thought and 
in social institutions are contained in this 
thought, " Our Father who art in heaven " ! 
The social teachings of this word descended 
upon an earth filled with armed regiments, 
with masters and emperors, and cruel 
despots, upon slaves and gladiators, even as 
the summer morn descends on the snow-clad 
hills of April, turning white flakes and frost 
crystals into flowers, herbs and grass. 

" Thy Icing dom come^ Thy will he done in 
earthy Here is a sentiment that sets kings 
trembling and thrones tottering. You can 
have no more iron militarism of Kome, no 
more cruelties in the palace of Herod, no 
more misgovernment by Pilate, after the 
Father's kingdom comes in earth. God's 
kingdom is the place where all men habitu- 
ally obey the laws of the Father ; the king- 
dom of earth is the place where all men 
habitually violate the laws of the Father. 
The kingdom of earth is the kingdom of 
selfishness, of disobedience to justice. The 
kingdom of earth is in this Roman master, 
who extorts luxury from a thousand slaves 
living on the edge of starvation. The 
286 



The New Ideal Commonwealth 

kingdom of earth is in Herod, who plays 
false to his palace, betrays his own soldiers, 
oppresses the poor, holds back the wage of 
his workers and makes earth to be a hell. 
The kingdom of earth in the scholar is in 
Byron, when he uses his splendid genius to 
lend beauty to Bacchus. The kingdom of 
earth is in the merchant, who uses his gifts 
to spoil men, until his wealth becomes like 
the Kiver Ehine, after it ceases to work, 
and in north Germany spreads out into a 
vast lake, a miasmatic pool, full of foul gases, 
a river that ought to have turned mill- 
wheels and kept sweet and pure by serving, 
a river that becomes a death-river, because 
it lives for itself alone. 

If the kingdom of heaven should come, 
and God's will be done, what would happen 
in Kussia to-day ? One hundred and twenty- 
nine millions of people in Russia own not a 
single title-deed to a foot of land ; ninety 
millions can neither read nor write ; these 
peasants own not a single book ; never see a 
newspaper ; scarcely know that war has gone 
on ; eat meat but once a week, wear leather 
coats, walk on dirt floors, know ugliness, 
filth, squalor, misery, while the absent land- 
lord lives in the city palace, leaving over- 
287 



The Fortune of the Republic 

seers to rack their rent out of them. If the 
prince and bureaucrat were to sincerely pray 
this prayer, " The Father's will be done 
among these, my serfs and peasants," the 
great estates would be broken up at once, 
peasants would be free to own their own 
vineyard and garden-plot ; it would no 
longer be a crime for a baroness to teach the 
peasant children to read and write ; Cossacks 
would no longer be hired at triple the usual 
wage to ride into groups of working-men and 
hack them down with swords. If God's king- 
dom should come, and the Father's will be 
done, in St. Petersburg, you could not have 
officers looting the royal hospital train, with 
the theft of all the surgeons' supplies, in- 
tended for the wounded soldiers in Port 
Arthur ; you would never again have the 
rich officer explain the looting of the train 
by saying that there was no use wasting 
treasures of the royal train on peasant 
soldiers — that " the Czar had a hundred and 
thirty million more of the dogs, anyhow." 

To-day feudalism is enthroned in Kussia. 
England gained Magna Charta in 1215, a 
representative parliament in the next cen- 
tury, broke up the great estates in 1646, des- 
troyed the doctrine of the divine right of 
288 



The New Ideal Commonwealth 

kings in the same revolution, put an end to 
feudalism and mediseval institutions. Now 
Eussia must gain freedom of speech, the 
liberty of the printing-press, the peasants' 
right to own lands, representative govern- 
ment, religious liberty, — and all in one revo- 
lution. Is Eussia to buy these treasures 
with rivers of blood? Every man who 
loves his kind ought to pray to God, by day 
and night, for thiese wretched millions. But 
if this prayer should be truly prayed by the 
Czar and the bureaucrats, autocracy would 
melt before the descent of the kingdom of 
God as the hoarfrost melts before the sum- 
mer's sun, for the kingdom of God from 
heaven means the new government on earth. 
" Give us this day our daily hread.'^'* 
Strange, that man, who of the whole 
order of animal creation, stands nearest to 
God, should alone, of all the animals, be 
compelled to pray daily for his bread ! Pass- 
ing strange, that man, God's child, alone is 
hungry ! Other animals find bread ; man 
must make it. Other animals have raiment, 
man must build a factory and make clothes. 
Other animals find shelter ; man must make 
tools and build his own houses. Bees find 
their clover-honey ready for them ; hungry, 
289 



The Fortune of the Republic 

the squirrels simply go and get their nuts; 
cold, the birds simply turn their heads to- 
wards the south. Man alone must waken to 
prayer, " Give me this day my daily bread," 
and work while he prays. At best, society 
is always within eyeglance and earshot of 
starvation. Yesterday water sold in Mos- 
cow at twenty cents a pailful. Bread also 
sold at forty cents a loaf. But a fortnight 
ago, and a member of the English govern- 
ment said that Great Britain was always 
within twenty-one days of hunger ; he 
therefore proposed that the government 
build great grain-depots in cities like Liver- 
pool and London, where the corn and wheat 
of the world should be stored without ex- 
pense to the owners, from whence their sales 
could be made. He calls this plan the free 
elevator and storage system, and in the 
event of war the government is to have the 
right of seizing the grain at the market 
price. 

But even in our own land we are always 
within a few weeks of possible hunger. 
Florida gathers certain fruits in February ; 
Georgia in March ; in June farmers cut their 
wheat in Kansas ; in late August the har- 
vesters of Dakota sharpen their sickles ; Sep- 
290 



The New Ideal Commonwealth 

t ember sees the grain of the Northwest 
garnered. But, should our earth, that 
trembles in its orbit, assume a little different 
angle towards the sun, a chill would creep 
into the August air, the frost would blight 
the corn and fruit and grass, and with No- 
vember, starvation would be on the land. 
Famine would stalk through the streets, 
pestilence would decimate the people. Scien- 
tists know this. It is people in cities who 
never think of the harvests, or how they 
are gotten, who are in danger of forgetting 
to pray. We live, we move, we breathe, in 
God. The thoughtful man is the profoundly 
religious man. 

But he who prays this prayer will be no 
drone, living on the sweets hived by the 
workers; no pauper, living on his rich 
father's estate ; no tramp, asking others to 
do the work. Nor will he eat devil's bread 
as a gambler ; nor lying bread, as a waterer 
of stock ; nor poisoned bread, as one who 
lives on other's passions ; nor the bread of 
cruelty, by withholding the wage of the 
poor, or using his gifts to spoil other work- 
men. This prayer, answered, would give 
us a new industrial order ; for hate between 
labourer and capitalist, would give the spirit 
291 



The Fortune of the RepubHc 

of good will. Two brothers living in a 
father's house, both dependent on the father 
for bread, in the hour of prayer will throw 
away their weapons, and cease to be over 
against each other like armed men, in the 
permanent feud that now exists between 
labourers and capitalists. 

" Forgive us out debts ^'* What a sentence 
is that in the Apostles' Creed — " I believe 
in the forgiveness of sins " ! To a young 
German boy an old monk once said, as he 
closed the Bible chained to the table in the 
monastery, " Of a truth, God can forgive 
sins." That sentence lingered in Luther's 
mind like a flood of golden sunshine. It 
made Martin Luther the reformer of 
Germany. ISTor could it be otherwise. 
Every man ought to find himself who has 
learned how to be at peace with his own 
record. The man who has come to terms 
with God has nothing to fear in this life 
or the next. Contrariwise, to blind one's 
eyes to one's own sins, for the glutton, or 
the thief, or the liar, to ignore his trans- 
gressions, is for the workman in Holland to 
turn his eyes away from the break in the 
dyke, for the sailor to neglect the leak in 
the ship, for the householder to forget the 
292 



The New Ideal Commonwealth 

spark that has fallen into the shavings, or 
for the ailing man to be careless of the 
disease that, if not cured, will end his career. 

" Forgive us our sins " ? Why, sin is the 
first and the great fact. [N'ature is always 
on the track of the transgressor. Physiol- 
ogy is always threatening the drunkard ; 
the stomach and brain are always warning 
the profligate ; the outraged nerves are al- 
ways prophesying revolution for the youth 
who disobeys their laws. Nature works 
remorselessly, and will not intermit her 
penalties. The prodigal son comes home, 
and his father forgives the sin ; yes, but the 
punishment goes on. The youth's health is 
lost. The years that are wasted are gone 
forever. The April fields of opportunity 
were sown to thorns and weeds, and now 
there are no sheaves of wisdom and fame 
and wealth for the October of old age. 

God forgives sin — forgives absolutely^ 
utterly — squarely — through and through — 
forgives and forgets — buries the sin in the 
depths of the sea, remembers it no more 
forever. But listen, " Forgive us our debts 
as we forgive our de'btors.'''' What if you 
capitalists are never forgiven of God any 
more fully than you forgive your workmen ? 
293 



The Fortune of the Republic 

What if God is always as hard on you as 
you workmen are hard on your employers ? 
You say that you helped that man, put him 
on his feet, loaned him money, made him 
what he is, and then he stabbed you in the 
back. " Forgive him ? Never ! I'll see 
him damned first." 

No : Forgive us our debts as we forgive 
our debtors : you cannot pray this prayer 
with a heart full of hate ; with a mind black 
with enmity ; with your soul as full of 
brooding thoughts of anger and enmity as 
a hole in the rock is full of rattlesnakes, or 
the night is full of bats and wolves and 
creatures that crawl and creep. When you 
sleep to-night, you sleep in the great world- 
house, the family chamber, and all about 
you are your earth-brothers, and the one 
who keeps watch over you is your Father, 
and His banner is love. And you must not 
hate ; and you must pray one prayer, " For- 
give us our trespasses as we forgive those 
that trespass against us." And when you 
pray it, for the first time perhaps in your 
life, a great, deep, sweet peace will come in 
like the tides of God, and lift your little 
life-craft from the shallows and float you out 
into the deep, where peace, perfect peace, 
294 



The New Ideal Commonwealth 

and happiness, abiding happiness, and se- 
curity, the security of the wings of God, 
shall be your possession forever. 

Plainly, Christ looked upon our world as 
a testing-place, a wrestling-ground, a moral 
gymnasium, a school of discipline, a uni- 
versity of character. Virtues must be 
gained, and kept. Character must be strug- 
gled for. " The virtues will not come un- 
asked nor stay unurged." The innocence 
of Adam and Eve, possessed because the 
hedge keeps the serpent out, is worthless. 
Better fling the gate open and take the ser- 
pent in, and have a goodness that is of free 
choice and a character that is built up by 
battle, than to have the soft and worthless 
"innocence" that is pure ignorance! So 
God pulled all the fences down, and turned 
all the temptations in, and put man on his 
mettle, and taught him by temptation and 
battle and struggle and defeat and victory. 
From the very beginning every form of 
peril was let loose. Not a parent but feels 
this. The boy of ten, sent out to exercise 
each day, is exposed to rain or wind or snow 
or heat, and while the parent trembles, he 
knows that the way of exposure is the way 
of hardihood and health. Time for travel 
295 



The Fortune of the Republic 

comes, and the parent sends the youth out 
into the world, to run the risk of storms at 
sea, accident in the forest, dangers in the 
mountain. It is better so. The path of risk 
is the path of glory. 

Into the great city goes the youth, to 
make his fortune. A thousand temptations 
are on every side. Doors that open towards 
the abyss are on every street-corner ; white 
and beautiful hands hold out the cup of 
flame ; evil men flourish like the green bay 
tree ; gamblers, speculators, prosper ; noto- 
rious men receive honours ; men with double 
lives in politics and finance are buried with 
honour. The parent trembles, but sends the 
youth into the thick of the moral figbt, and 
by day and by night he praj^s, " Lead us not 
into temptation. Oh, Lord, do not make the 
way too long, the rocks too sharp, the cup 
too sweet, the demon of temptation to be 
transfigured into an angel of beauty and of 
light. Expose the snare in the sight of the 
bird. Deliver us from eviiy 

But when the man has prayed this prayer, 
"Lead us not into temptation," for himself 
and his children, he must pray it for others 
also. That man must not own a tenement- 
house whose vicious surroundings will lead 
296 



The New Ideal Commonwealth 

his renters' children into temptation. He 
must not let his property for saloons or evil 
hotels, or make his business to be a death- 
trap and lure to evil. He must not, as 
politician, debauch men. He must not as 
merchant tempt them — his clerks, boys and 
girls — by giving them a wage so small that 
they must eke out subsistence by sin. In- 
dustrially, if this prayer were answered, it 
would open up a gulf and swallow half of 
these streets with the saloons and evil re- 
sorts ; it would bring half of the tenements 
crashing down ; it would destroy absolutely 
the headquarters of corrupt political rings ; 
it would smite into nothingness the whirl- 
pools of speculation ; it would set up the city 
of God in yonder Babylon, and for hate and 
strife in the market-place give quiet indus- 
try, fruitful work, pure hearts, happy lives. 
And doubt not but that this day will 
come. For the kingdom of earth shall be- 
come the kingdom of our God. His is the 
power. And because the Father is able. He 
will bring in the Golden Age. Long have we 
prayed, " Thy kingdom come," and the new 
social order is coming, and to God shall be 
the glory. ]^o more war, no more trampled 
cornfields ; no more bloody streets ; no 
297 



The Fortune of the Republic 

more tumult and strife between labour and 
capital ; no more corruption in legislative 
halls. Industry shall become a fruitful vine, 
whose leaves shall heal the nations. The 
laws shall be obeyed. Liberty shall bless 
and not curse man. Open shall be all the 
paths to the schoolhouse ; beautiful, also, 
the threshold of church and library and 
lecture-hall. In peace each man shall dwell 
under his own vine and fig tree. 

For the Lord's Prayer shall at last be 
answered, and the City of God shall be set 
up in our earth. 



298 



XIII 

" One Man Soweth, and Another 
Reapeth " 

Christ is now stating for His disciples 
the universal elements in His kingdom. He 
has already given them the universal name, 
our Father in heaven ; the universal prayer, 
the Lord's Prayer ; the universal need, 
the new heart ; the universal law, the law 
of love and sympathy ; and He is about to 
give the universal hope, the hope of life 
immortal. But here and now He is talk- 
ing to them about the law of one's life-work, 
the handing forward of personality and 
influence. And the law of this is, that we 
reap a harvest of happiness that our fathers 
sowed ; and that we in turn are to sow har- 
vests of well-being that other hands will 
reap. 

The philosophy of the law is that God's 

plans are long plans. His vine is a vine of 

power and influence, whose boughs stretch 

over generations, while His sheaves wave, 

299 



The Fortune of the Republic 

not over furrows, but across centuries ; so 
that two generations are necessary to com- 
pass the space between seed-time and har- 
vest. Fortunately, nature makes this law 
clear. As things go up towards excellence, 
they ask more time for full growth. In the 
garden, a week answers for the mushroom, 
a month for the radish, a summer for the 
shock of corn, five summers for the peach, 
while fifty are necessary for the oak and 
elm. Not otherwise is it in the kingdom of 
morals. In a single hour the parent can 
teach the child the folly of cutting his 
fingers. But when you rise to the culture 
of the disposition, and the sweetening of 
the whole life and the uplift of a nation, 
long time becomes necessary. Thus the 
teacher, the patriot, the merchant, sow in 
sorrow, and die, not having received the 
promise. Then when long time has passed, 
the son doubles the achievements of his 
father ; the young patriot overthrows polit- 
ical abuses that his dead leader supposed 
were intrenched forever ; and, standing on 
his teacher's discoveries, and beginning 
where his master left off, the pupil pushes 
the horizon back, and finds out secrets that 
would have amazed his guide. So one sows 
300 



"One Soweth, Another Reapeth" 

and another reaps. One man labours and an- 
other enters into the fruit of his labours. 

But hardly had Christ completed His 
statement of this law of work and influence 
than His disciples began to illustrate it. 
In the hour of persecution they fled from 
Jerusalem in all directions, some into the 
north towards Babylon, some to the south- 
east towards Arabia, one group to the cities 
to the south of the Mediterranean, and an- 
other group to the cities of the northern 
coast. Everywhither they went, preaching 
the kingdom of righteousness, peace and 
love. Beholding them afar off, brutal 
leaders went forth to meet the Apostles 
with stones and clubs and swords, and soon 
ten of them had achieved a violent death. 
But what they sowed we have reaped. Lift 
up your eyes and behold a world filled with 
free cities, blessed with religious liberty, 
political equality and the full rights of op- 
portunity and work ! Yet in the hour when 
Christ stated the law it staggered the dis- 
ciples. "Why should one have to sow and 
another reap ? Why should one labour and 
toil, and another enter into the reward ? 
Does not sowing mean the weary foot, the 
aching back and the dripping brow ? Do 
301 



The Fortune of the Republic 

we not associate shouts with the sheaves 
and the harvest festival with the reaping ? 
Nothing is so hard as the opening of the fur- 
row and the sowing of the seed. What sup- 
ports the toiler is the foresight of the harvest. 
Once convince the Finns that what they sow 
the Kussians will reap, and these outraged 
peasants will refuse to cast away their seed. 
Once let the Macedonians believe that if 
they plant the vine the Turks will pluck the 
clusters, they will henceforth neglect their 
vineyards. The Bulgarians will not build 
houses that others may dwell therein. Any- 
thing, therefore, — war, brigandage, unjust 
taxation — that tends to render the harvest 
uncertain, discourages the sowing. But in 
bold, clear, unmistakable terms Jesus Christ 
tells His disciples that He sends them forth 
to sow a harvest they shall never reap. He 
capitalizes the difficulties. He tells them that 
He sends them out as sheep among wolves, 
He gives them no purse, no staff, no promise 
of the reward of a far off reaping. Some- 
thing in His appeal to His followers reminds 
us of Garibaldi's. After the Italian hero 
was driven out of Rome by the French he 
found refuge in a peasant's hut. In an hour 
when he was covered with blood and 
302 



"One Soweth, Another Reapeth" 

pierced with balls and bayonet-thrusts he 
sent forth this call for troops : " Soldiers, 
what I have to offer you is this : hunger, 
thirst, cold, heat, no pay, no barracks, no 
rations, frequent alarms, forced marches, 
charges at the point of the bayonet ; who- 
ever loves honour and fatherland, follow 
me." And four thousand men followed him 
to their death. Thus also was it with 
Christ. He sent His soldiers out to capture 
fortresses with no weapons save their bleed- 
ing fingers and their prayers. But the dis- 
ciples met the stone, the club and the sword 
with forgiveness and the martyrs' courage. 
Soon they fell on death. They sowed and 
we have reaped harvests of the spirit, ca- 
thedrals of worship, Te Deums of praise, 
literatures, new laws and liberties, happy 
homes and the immortal hope that arms 
life against death itself. For we have en- 
tered fully into their labours. 

Consider the justice of this law of influ- 
ence. It would be easy to establish the in- 
tellectual supremacy of Christ over other 
teachers by His statement of this principle 
alone. Lift up your ej^es and behold the na- 
tions. Of all social wealth we can only say 
that one soweth, another reapeth. Immeas- 
303 



The Fortune of the Republic 

urable the wealth of this republic. Our 
treasure, in lands, in pastures and meadows, 
in fields of cotton and of wheat, in flocks 
and herds, in farmhouse and factory, in 
car and ship, represents some ninety bil- 
lions of dollars. The sum of this treasure 
represents wealth so vast as to stagger im- 
agination itself. And to whom does it be- 
long ? Is this treasure the possession of the 
forty millions of adults ? Strictly speaking 
it all belongs to the children and the babes 
in the cradle. These little ones, who have 
never opened a single furrow, are to reap 
this great harvest of wealth. These babes 
will ride in cars they have never built, will 
sail in ships they never constructed, will use 
looms and engines they never invented. 
They are going to live in mansions on the 
avenues and cottages in the streets that 
their hands never founded. They will read 
books they never wrote. They will enjoy 
laws they did not enact. They will use 
liberties they never won. They will laugh 
over comedies and weep over tragedies and 
exult and sing through solemn prayers, not 
one of which they ever made. For the great 
merchants, the inventors, the architects, the 
authors will to-morrow all pass on forever. 
304 



"One Soweth, Another Reapeth" 

O, if you young men and women had the 
magician's skill, or the wand of imagination, 
and could make the past to live, how real 
this statement would become, that one gen- 
eration sows and another generation reaps. 
And what sorrow of sowing was that of our 
fathers ! They came to inhospitable shores. 
Nature met them with storms, with bleak- 
ness, with savage beasts and still more savage 
men. Midst the snow they hewed out the 
forest and founded the town. They subdued 
the wild grasses and conquered the niggardly 
soil. They cut roads through the wilder- 
ness j they covered the hillsides with fruit 
trees ; they tunnelled the mountains ; they 
bridged the rivers ; they uncovered the coal. 
In the far off Western forests what heroism 
and what privation, and what tears from the 
sowers ! What tragedies written in the story 
of Lincoln's mother's little mound in the 
wilderness ! Breathing the malarial air that 
rose from the new soil, they shivered with 
cold and burned with fever. When that 
group named the Iowa Band went forth to 
lay the foundation of a state they laboured 
not for themselves alone. They sowed a 
harvest of intelligence and wealth for another 
generation. Few of them ever saw the 
305 



The Fortune of the Republic 

result of their labours. On their tombstones 
you may write these words : " In the wilder- 
ness they were born ; there they lived ; in 
the wilderness they died." But what they 
desired to see, and died without seeing, their 
children have beheld, namely, the wilderness 
become a city ! And the rich harvest that 
is now ripening from all that earlier sowing 
is all yours. Yours their houses, their lands, 
the comforts they created, the laws they 
passed, the railways they built. Yours their 
gold, their silver ; they wove a rich texture 
whose threads are golden with treasure, and 
spread this shining web over all the land, the 
beads being great towns and cities. For 
verily, one generation sows and another 
reaps. Our fathers laboured and we have 
entered into the fruit of their labours. 

Having vindicated the justice of our sow- 
ing a harvest of happiness that we shall 
never reap, because we have reaped harvests 
that we never sowed, consider that this is 
not merely a national law, but it is also an 
intellectual law for the individual. Our 
age makes much of its great men. We never 
tire of praising them. We celebrate their 
birthdays. We make a pilgrimage to Stock- 
bridge to see Jonathan Edwards' chair. We 
306 



" One Soweth, Another Reapeth " 

pay a fortune for a little relic from Strat- 
ford. The city preserves the pen with which 
the great author wrote. We make long 
journeys to some foreign land to stand be- 
fore the house where the hero was born. 
All this is right. Nor are we here to belit- 
tle the achievements of great men. But jus- 
tice to the army of unrecognized heroes is 
also important. These great ones of earth 
stand on the shoulders of unseen helpers. 
Knowledge represents a progression. Some- 
times the life-saving crew link hands, make 
a long human chain, running out into the 
waves, and if the man furthest from the 
shore gets the praise of succour, all the mem- 
bers of the chain deserve like commendation. 
Not otherwise is it in the realm of intel- 
lectual discovery. We praise Isaac Newton, 
but if Isaac Newton were living, the great 
scholar would be the first man to insist that 
he reaped a harvest of knowledge that 
others had sown for him. Ptolemy thought 
the blue sky was a dome, that the stars were 
holes in the dome where God set candles 
burning, that the moon was a larger aper- 
ture, and opened into the palace, or banquet- 
ing hall of the gods, that was never dark. 
But some of the astronomers devoted a life 
307 



The Fortune of the Republic 

to the overthrow of Ptolemy's view, and 
they made ready for Newton's coming. 
Galileo invented a telescope to multiply the 
power of the coming Newton's eyes. Kep- 
ler discovered the great laws of motion, and 
handed over to Newton four powerful instru- 
ments. Copernicus proved that the sun was 
the centre, shepherding the planets. What 
harvests of wisdom were these ! But for 
these unseen friends who had laboured, and 
into whose labours Isaac Newton entered, 
there would have been no discovery of the 
law of gravitation. He took the next step 
forward. We praise Isaac Newton and 
rightly do we praise him. In that hour when 
Newton saw that his computations were to 
establish the soundness of his theory of 
gravitation, he became so agitated that his 
hand could not hold the pen, and he asked 
his helpers to complete a task for which joy 
had made him unequal. But when the world 
poured a flood of honours upon the philoso- 
pher, it quite forgot the unseen sowers who 
stood back of Newton, whose ripe sheaves he 
had harvested. They laboured. He entered 
into the fruit of their labours ! 

Sometimes an intellectual movement for 
a nation illustrates this law of work and in- 
308 



" One Soweth, Another Reapeth " 

fluence. During the Middle Ages man's 
mind was darkened. The symbol of that 
generation, Symonds says, is Bernard, rid- 
ing around Lake Geneva in Switzerland. 
The monk's eyes are closed and while his 
head is bowed over the neck of his mule, his 
fingers are counting the beads. For him 
there are no white clouds in the sky, no 
white mountains like altars of prayer on 
the horizon, no blue lake at his feet, no 
forests of pine covering the hillsides like 
the garments of God. He closes his eyes, 
and mutters his prayers, and counts his 
beads, lest the light and joy of this world 
break in upon his soul, and flood it with 
splendour. Then, one day, in this dark 
epoch, an old man appears in Florence. He 
is clothed with rags ; he is miserably poor, 
but he has one treasure, a roll that he has 
brought from a far-off tomb in Athens. 
The stranger assembles the idlers on the 
street. In low, sweet voice, he reads to 
them the tales of Agamemnon, of the elo- 
quence of Nestor, the beauty of that Helen 
over whom kings fought, the fidelity of 
Penelope, the story of that Ulysses who 
wandered afar, but finally returned to his 
fireside altar. The strange black letters on 
309 



The Fortune of the Republic 

the old manuscripts looked like magic to 
the ignorant Italians. The wonderful tales 
spread like wildfire. The old scholar be- 
came a hero. The prince received him into 
the palace. The manuscripts were multi- 
plied. Knowledge became a sacred con- 
tagion. A school was founded, that the 
people might listen to lectures on these old 
Greek poets. Artists came forward to illus- 
trate the manuscripts. As the parent awak- 
ens the child from sleep to the joy and 
duties of the day, so these old Greek mas- 
ters wakened the Italian mind that had 
been sleeping for centuries, and led it forth 
into the joys of this wonderful world. 
What seeds had the old Greek orators and 
philosophers and poets sown ! What an in- 
tellectual harvest is this that we find in the 
outburst of art I The rise of the inventors, 
the great voyages of the discoverers, the 
overthrow of feudalism, the rise of the 
new liberty ! Italy became the land of 
wealth, rich with a thousand sheaves. Her 
art-galleries, and her cathedrals, and her 
palaces, were stuffed with the harvests of 
the intellect. But do not forget that hands 
long since dust had sown these harvests. 
Petrarch and Boccaccio reaped that on 
31Q 



"One Soweth, Another Reapeth" 

which they had bestowed no labour. Athens 
laboured, and Florence entered into the 
fruit of her labours. 

But whatever is true in one kingdom of 
life must be true also in other kingdoms. 
We are not surprised, therefore, to dis- 
cover that this principle of one sowing and 
another reaping holds in the industrial 
world. Much of the wealth of to-day can 
hardly be called ours. The trains are now 
coming over the mountains from California 
laden with grapes, and soon the raisins will 
come, and the oranges. Most fascinating, 
the history of this wealth. When Cortez 
returned from Mexico he carried shiploads 
of gold and silver and various forms of 
wealth back to Spain. But the missionaries 
were not seeking men's gold, but men's 
souls. They therefore broke with Cortez, 
and fled into the mountains. Making their 
way to the shores of the Pacific, they jour- 
neyed north. One of these teachers carried 
w^th him the root that after centuries has 
become the celebrated Santa Barbara vine. 
Its trunk is like a man's trunk for thickness, 
and in a single summer it ripens tons of 
grapes, competing with the historic vine in 
Hampton Court. And the raisin-grapes that 



The Fortune of the Republic 

now feed the world, this great store of the 
fruit of the vine that journeys over the 
mountains to feed these far off States, we 
owe to that humble priest. He laboured, 
he suffered incredible hardships, he perished 
in the desert, he was stricken down by sav- 
age Indians, but dying he left the furrow 
open. He laboured, and we have entered 
into the fruit of his labours. 

Last summer I went into the Kensington 
Museum in London to study the rise of the 
tools. I never knew before that clergymen 
had invented five of the greatest wealth- 
producing tools in history. There I saw 
the first reaper, made by the Kev. Peter 
Bell. It is a rude mechanism, held together 
by copper thread and filaments of pounded 
iron and old rope. His church paid the man 
a very poor salary. Also the task of so ex- 
plaining the Confession of Faith as to make 
it seem reasonable took all the hours in the 
day and left the poor man no time for work 
in the garden. Plainly, if he were to do 
both things, he had to invent a tool that 
would work for him while he studied the 
catechism. Thus the poverty of the preacher 
wrought great wealth to the people in the 
pew by inventing inventive discovery. 
312 



" One Soweth, Another Reapeth " 

Some ten years later a newspaper account 
of this reaper seems to have drifted to this 
country, and with nothing but the sugges- 
tion, Mr. McCormick reinvented the reaper 
on lines original and peculiarly his own. 
That reaper enabled us to win the late war, 
in that an old man or a girl could drive 
the machine while the strong men were set 
free to go to the front. And what shall I 
more say, save this, that Whitney invents 
his cotton-gin and multiplies the value of 
every acre of cotton-land by ten, and dies 
in poverty. Whitney labours, the Southern 
planters found an association to fight his 
patents, and they enter into the fruit of 
his labours. Goodyear toils unceasingly 
for a score of years over his task of vulcan- 
izing India-rubber, and dies heart-broken ; 
the sailors, dry midst the storm, the miners, 
comfortably standing in the water, the mil- 
lions in the forest and in the fields and in 
the cities, who go dry shod under the 
drenching rain — these reap what the in- 
ventor sowed. He laboured, we have en- 
tered into the fruits of his labours. Some 
of you young men think that the world 
owes you a living. Why, if you lived a 
million million years, if you toiled without. 
3^3. 



The Fortune of the Republic 

slumber or sleep, think you you would ever be 
able to repay the debt you owe to the great 
society round about you ? The world does 
not owe you a living I You owe the world 
a thousand lives, for your harvest of good 
fortune is a reaping that other men sowed. 

This law of the sower is a moral and 
spiritual law. Keats, dying, insists that his 
name is writ in water, but we know that it 
was written in triple brass. Experience has 
also taught us that every man who lives 
writes his full life-story indelibly on the 
world about him. Shakespeare says the good 
that men do . is often interred with their 
bones, but the evil that they do lives after 
them. No wise man can doubt that both 
evil and good live forever. On every side 
we behold men of wickedness all compact, 
the mere weight of whose being scatters in- 
iquity and breeds strife and sin. It is as if 
their souls were set on fire of hell, and they 
kindle a conflagration as they journey 
through life. Think of the politicians who 
have looked upon their positions as a form 
of personal graft, and have preyed upon the 
people as the harpy feeds upon the dead vic- 
tim again. Think of the authors of salacious 
books, men who have become the high 
314 



"One Soweth, Another Reapeth " 

priests of Bacchus and Yenus, who have en- 
abled drunkards to sing attractive songs, 
and wreath the sepulchres of sin with flow- 
ers. All these have made Satan to stand 
forth in the guise of an angel of light. 

Sometimes a nation illustrates this harvest 
of iniquity, and a whole people have con- 
spired together to sow transgression, the 
fathers sow the wind, the children reap the 
whirlwind. The one generation labours to 
scatter tares, and the next generation reaps 
tares, and starvation, and retribution im- 
measurable. Witness the career of Spain. 
In 1478 Torquemada set up the inquisition. 
In a few months four thousand Christians 
who interpreted their religious faith for 
themselves, were burned alive. In 1492 the 
edict was extended against the Jews. They 
were bidden to leave Spain, and at the 
frontier were searched for hidden gold and 
silver. In Portugal they were sent as slaves 
to the sugar-plantations and the markets of 
Algiers and Constantinople. Eight hundred 
thousand of these wretched folk were driven 
to suicide or death. They flung themselves 
into the wells. Fronted by starvation, the 
father slew his entire family. The Moors, 
believing that they had swallowed their 



The Fortune of the Republic 

gems, tortured them with swords. Two 
hundred thousand were driven to the boats 
on the Mediterranean. Coming to the 
shores of Italy, they were denied the 
privilege of landing ; Genoa put soldiers on 
her wharf. The miserable creatures, an- 
chored in sight of the beautiful shores of 
Genoa, slowly starved to death or died from 
the pestilence that broke out. In a year 
they were all dead. But the evil that Genoa 
did to these people lived afterwards for the 
Genoese. These dead bodies that floated to 
her shores brought pestilence with them. 
Soon in the palaces of Genoa went up the 
death-cry, and in three months 20,000 of her 
citizens were dying or dead, and Genoa has 
never been the same city since. The father 
sowed selfishness, the children reaped sick- 
ness, the grandchildren reaped poverty and 
death. Be not deceived, God is not mocked. 
What you sow, another shall reap. For 
when the fathers have eaten sour grapes, the 
children's teeth are set on edge. 

This principle gives us the measure of per. 
sonal worth. That man is worth the most 
to the state who sows the greatest harvests 
for coming generations. That man is worth 
least who lives for to-day and to-day alone* 
316 



"One Soweth, Another Reapeth " 

The men that we call practical are often 
most unpractical. Contrariwise, the men 
whom we call dreamers are oftentimes 
sturdy and practical men. When a man 
founds a business, he first considers the 
running expenses. If he makes two per cent, 
clear he will soon fail ; if he makes six, he pros- 
pers. If he makes twenty, he will soon be 
rich. Not otherwise is it with God's invest- 
ment in a man. If the individual man uses 
his seven days in hard work to support his 
family, and produce property that will soon 
rot or decay or rust, the man is a poor in- 
vestment ; he simply runs the business and 
brings in no increment of value or overplus 
for society. If the man, considered as a 
divine investment, can save a half -day for 
the great things that count, teaching the 
truths that abide, inspiring the discouraged, 
lifting up the fallen, bringing the wander- 
ers back, shaping the career of children and 
of youth, that man is reaching forward 
into the future and controlling far off events. 
In measuring a man, therefore, think of his 
present life, plus two generations in which 
his influence is continued, and then you get 
the full scope of his being. From this view- 
point there are many men whose footsteps 
317 



The Fortune of the Republic 

cause yonder city to tremble, who will in a 
single generation perish into utter oblivion. 
On the other hand, there are certain men 
toiling among the poor, working among our 
immigrants ; there are modest teachers in 
the mission schools, there are men in the 
Bible-classes on Sunday afternoon, who are 
training hundreds of these 3^oung foreigners, 
and through these newcomers, with their 
fine bodies, these obscure teachers will create 
within the next generations more wealth, ten 
to one, than some of those who are given a 
place among the great ones of earth. For 
good work does not perish. Truth is not 
lost. Example does not evaporate like the 
mist. The flower's perfume dissolves, but 
not the soul's. That abides forever. That 
foolish Pietro made Michael Angelo carve 
an angel in snow to show his gay com- 
panions that he could control the greatest 
genius in Florence. But when the work 
was done, Michael Angelo exclaimed, " You 
think my work is temporary, because it is in 
snow, soon melting. But know that I have 
created an ideal so beautiful and so pure 
that it is written forever upon your memory. 
You thought it would perish because it was 
in snow. Henceforth it is in the soul that 
318 



"One Soweth, Another Reapeth" 

endures. If you continue in evil, it will rise 
up like an avenging angel and smite you." 
(I do not mean that Michael Angelo ever 
said this — it is what I think he ought to 
have said, and must have said.) Xnd long 
afterwards the great artist's obedience and 
his bravery reappear, shaping Mrs. Brown- 
ing's poetry, colouring Kobert Browning's 
life. 

For the great are not dead. Is Eaphael 
dead ? His brush was never so powerful. 
Is Dante dead ? His songs were never so 
piercingly sweet. Are the reformers dead ? 
They live like the trees and vineyards their 
hands planted. Are the martyrs dead ? In 
our vision-hours their souls flash like the 
wings of the spirit of God. All these jour- 
ney on from generation to generation. Our 
parents were never so forceful in our lives 
as they have been since they were lifted up, 
while from the heavens they rain love and 
inspiration upon us. For our successes are 
theirs and theirs our virtues. They laboured, 
they suffered, they taught, they prayed, 
they achieved, they sacrificed, they died ; 
the golden harvests of character that they 
sowed we have reaped. God bless their 
memory forevermore I 
319 



The Fortune of the Republic 

Therefore, open your hand and sow your 
seed. Give out your influence as freely as 
the sun sows its heat and light over the dark 
planet. Sow a sweet atmosphere and scatter 
it everywhither, as the flowers pour forth 
their perfume. Sow to-morrow the soil with 
kind words and gentle bearing, even as the 
prairies are sown by the winds that are rich 
in invisible spores and seeds for future har- 
vests. Do not be niggardly in your life — 
give, that you may receive again. Be kinder 
to your friends. Be more generous to your 
children. Practice praising them and leave 
blame to others. Accumulate weight of man- 
hood, that unconsciously you may distribute 
treasure. It is better to have saved a news- 
boy from discouragement, to have recovered 
a clerk from his wrongdoing, to have brought 
a sunny hour to an invalid, to have stated 
a great truth to a group of children — it is 
better to have saved a life, than to have won 
a kingdom. 

Then, open the furrow and sow your har- 
vest. Sow, as you cross the continent of the 
years, and God's angel will follow after you, 
and bring in the sheaves. You may open 
the furrow with tears, but when the sheaves 
come you will rejoice with shoutings. Give 
320 



" One Soweth, Another Reapeth " 

a cup of cold water and God will give you 
in return of the Eiver of the Water of Life. 
For they that be wise shall shine as the 
firmament, and they that turn many to 
righteousness as the stars forever and ever. 



321 



Index 



Ability for organiza- 
tion a wealth pro- 



ducer 



. 134, 135 



Abraham 74, 83 

Achilles 265 

Adam 185 

Adams 262 

Adventurous spirit, 

decline of the . . 191 
Affiliation between 
the state and 
schools of learn- 
ing 103 

Agamemnon .... 309 
Alcibiades . . . 154, 265 

Alva 246 

Angelo, Michael . . 132 
318, 319 
Annexation of Texas . 78 
Arbitration and Peace 
Conference at 
Lake Mohouk . 41 
Argument of Nature 

as a warning, The 178 
Arkwright . . . 165, 261 
Arnold, Matthew . . 96 
Athletic spirit in our 

colleges, the . . 194 
Austrian Emperor at 

Innsbruck . . 47, 48 



Bach 107 

Bacon, Lord . 184, 252, 261 
Bakewell, Robert . . 164 
Barrows, Dr 268 



Beaumont & Fletcher 18 
Beautiful, Influence of 
and diffusion of 
the ... . 25, 26, 27 

Beeoher 35, 255 

Bell, Rev. Peter, and 

his invention . . 312 

Bernard 309 

Blue Laws of Connec- 
ticut 249 

Boccaccio 310 

Braddock 92 

Bradford . . 252, 260, 262 
Breaking down of ra- 
cial and sectional 
barriers, the . . 12 
Brewster . . 252, 260, 262 
Brotherhood, the law 

of . . . 230, 231, 232 
Brotherly love and pa- 
triotism in the 
South .... 49, 50 
Brown, John .... 252 
Browning, Robert . . 319 
Browning, Mrs. . . . 319 

Bunyan 75 

Burbank 149 

Burdens upon public 

officials .... 280 
Burns, Robert . 116, 127 
133, 159 
Burritt, Elihu ... 56 
Bushnell, Horace . . 103 
Byron 287 



Cabot 244 



323 



Index 



California's fruit 
wealth, origin of 

311, 312 

Calhoun 48 

Calvin, John . . 39, 199 

209, 210, 212 

Carlyle, Thomas . 91, 104 

his warning 187, 191, 259 

Chamberlain, Joseph, 227 

Champlain 244 

Chang, Mr. (secretary 
of special Chinese 
embassy) . . . 276 

Chapin 35 

Christ, Jesus, His 

name uneclipsed 39 

210 

good news of, the . 40 

• patriotism of . 52, 177 

keeping Him alive 

in men .... 100 
value of His vote . 104 
His likeness . . . 121 
His estimate of the 

individual . . . 126 
ignored social con- 
dition 127 

none too obscure to 

escape His notice 127 
philosophy of indi- 
vidual excellence 
His remedy . . 128 
His brotherhood 
with man . . 147, 230 
231, 236 
showing the signs of 
the times . 178, 179 
182, 186 
pointing out the 

cure for all ills . 187 
His spirit .... 189 
great simplicities, 

the .... 199, 213 
His cross 200 



Christ, His man- 
hood 207 

ideal for His church 208 

His teachings . . . 209 

universality of His 
name 210 

what He has done 
and will do . . 219 

collapse of social 
schemes without 
Him 222 

necessity for the liv- 
ing .... 228, 229 

destruction of gladi- 
atorial games, the 231 

greatest social re- 
former, the . . . 232 

His emphasis of the 
individual ... 233 

His relation to the 
labour problem . 233 
234 

His life as a carpen- 
ter 235 

giving His life . . 239 

His method . . . 240 

Puritan and Cava- 
lier united before 
Him 252 

His w o r 1 d-w i d e 
plans 263 

His obscure birth . 264 

universal note in 
His teachings, the 266 

guide in prayer, a . 267 

finding Him ... 270 

as teacher, example 
and Saviour . . 271 

glory and beauty of 
His life .... 272 

power to meet the 
universal need . 273 

power to make all 
souls great . . . 273 



324 



Index 



altruism of His re- 
ligion 274 

His overflowing 
goodness .... 274 

need of His evangel, 
the 275 

building life into 
His plan .... 281 

His scheme of indi- 
V i d u a 1 redemp- 
tion and social re- 
construction . . 282 

source of conception 
of 284 

His outlook upon 
our world . . . 295 

universal elements 
in His kingdom . 299 

His statement of the 
law 301 

sowing the harvests 302 

others reaping what 
He sows .... 303 

His intellectual su- 
premacy .... 303 
Christian educators 
and missionaries 
in the West, in- 
fluence of . . . 77 
Christianity's affilia- 
tion with the arts 
and education . 87 
Christianity a system 

of universals, 209, 210 
Christianity, universal 

note in . . . 265, 266 
Christianity, victories 

of 275 

Church of the future, 

the .... 207, 208 
Churches, the strug- 
gling 278 

Church unity, the 



epoch of, now 
upon us . . 198, 199 

Cicero 230 

Civil War, burning 
away the barriers 

of 48 

effects of annual re- 
union 50 

its effects upon our 

nation . . 42, 43, 44 
need for a perspec- 
tive to get its 
message and 
meaning . . .45, 46 

Civilization a store 

house ..... Ill 

Class distinctions in 

the republic . . 157 

Class hatred in France 156 

Clay, Henry ... 56, 160 

Clouds on our national 

horizon ... 63, 64 

Commencement day, 

influence of . . 101 

Commerce and trade 
working towards 
unity ... 19, 20, 21 

Commercial prosperity 
and national de- 
cay often coex- 
istent 180 

Commonwealth, social 

vision of the ideal 220 
221, 222 

Communal church, the 

great . 213, 214, 215 

Conditions, intellec- 
tual, political and 
moral, existing in 
former times and 
in our own day . 10 

Cooper 173 

Copernicus 308 



325 



Index 



Cornelius 270 

Corwiu, Senator . . 78 
Crises, in the history 
of our country, 
three great ... 78 
Crcesus . . . 101, 172 
Cromwell . 254, 260, 262 
Crying need of the age 
for inventive abil- 
ity, the ... . 168 
Curtis, George Will- 
iam . . 35, 243, 255 
Cutler, Manasseh . 76, 84 
Cyrus 191 



Daniel .... 183, 253 

Dante .... 75, 81, 221, 

226, 319 

Darwin .... 107, 145 

David 180 

Davy, Sir Humphrey 160 
Days without civic 

corruption, the . 72 
Demagogue the curse 

of every era, the 154 
Denominations, the 
amalgamation of 

the 211 

Departure of the Pil- 
grim Fathers from 
Delfshaven . . 67, 68 

DeSoto 244 

Diffusion of books and 
pictures among 
the poor . . 152, 153 

Drake 244 

Dream, a German 

peasant's .... 86 

Dreyfus decision . . 18 

Dudley, Lord ... 26 

Duncan, William, and 

the Story of Met- 

lakahtla .... 94 



Education a conta- 
gion 20 

Education the first fac- 
tor in human prog- 
ress ... 114, 115 

Edwards, Jonathan . 39 
306 

Effects of the sense of 

ownership . . . 143 

Effects of immigra- 
tion 57, 58 

Elizabeth, Queen . 26, 245 

Eliot, President's 
statement regard- 
ing the profes- 
sions 193 

Emerson 72, 98, 107, 127 
189, 191, 194 

Enthusiasm for edu- 
cation 35 

Eternity of truth, the 119 

Everett, Edward . . 116 

Ewald 147 

Example of some few 
rich the hope of 
the future . . . 174 

Evangel of God's love, 
final triumph of 
the 263 

Every age and gener- 
ation has its own 
task 195 

Factory and mining 
towns, certain 
conditions in . . 139 
140, 141 

Factory tragedy, the . 188 

Failure of past dreams 
of the Golden 
Age, and the rea- 
sons for it . . . 222 

Failure of the Beauti- 
ful to save men . 226 



326 



Index 



False ideas regarding 

wealth 163 

Fathers, the, sense of 
righteousness and 
justice . . . 259, 260 
achievements of the 65 
temper and spirit of 

the 257 

victory of the faith 
of our 258 

Farraday, Michael . 160 

Federated churches in 
Canada, Australia 
and New Zealand 211 

Felix 253 

Ferguson 160 

Fiske 83 

Forces working for 
unitv in the re- 
public, the . 11, 12, 14 

Forefathers, the priva- 
tions of our . . 305 

Forefathers' Day, cele- 
bration of . . . 241 

Foreigners, the influx 

of 80 

Forgiveness, God's ab- 
solute 293 

Forgiveness, none 

where hate reigns 294 

Forgiveness of sin, the 292 

Fortunes won through 

ability 166 

Foulon 156 

Franklin 71 

Free trade and protec- 
tion as factors in 
social salvation . 227 

Future, the heritage 

of the 304 

Garfield 56 

Garibaldi .... 81, 302 
Galileo 253, 308 

. 327 



Garrison, (Wm. Lloyd) 254 
Genius of property a 

trust, the . . . 175 
Gladstone . . 70, 86, 96 
174, 255 
God's method of de- 
veloping a nation 
by limitations . 74 

Goethe 184 

Gold discoveries in 

1847, the ... 79 
Golden harvests to be 
reaped from sym- 
pathy and love, 

the 320 

Goodyear 313 

Gorky, Maxim ... 55 

Gough 35 

Grant, (U. S.) . . . 160 
Great evils still to be 

overthrown . . 219 
Greatness and charac- 
ter, no royal road 

to 120 

Great lesson of slav- 
ery, the ... . 109 
Great generation that 
which is possessed 
by ideals, a . . 192 
Green, (John Richard) 192 
223 
Guarding our institu- 
tions, the task of 99 
100 

Hamilton 71 

Hampden . . . 260, 262 
Handel .... 125, 136 
Harte, Bret .... 80 
Hatred between the 
masses and classes 
in Athens and in 

Paris 155 

Hawthorne 93 



Index 



Hector 265 

Helen of Troy ... 309 
Heroes in the intel- 
lectual realm . . 307 
308, 309, 310 
Heroic age in our his- 
tory, the .... 69 
Heroic note, the . . 277 
Herod ... 84, 180, 181 

Herschel 266 

Historian, task of the 9 
Hitchcock, Dr. . . . 144 
Homer . . .22, 75, 265 
Hooker, Thomas . . 84 

Horace 127 

Howard, John ... 173 

Hume 249 

Huss, John . . 39, 81 



Ideal for the Chris- 
tian Church . 204, 205 

Ideal in morals, in 
Christianity and 
in liberty, the . 149 
150 

Immigrants, Ameri- 
canization of our . 61 

Increasing the wage 
by increasing in- 
telligence . . . 137 

Individual worth the 
secret of an in- 
creasing wage . 132 

Industrious poor the 
bulwarks of all 
that is best in our 
civilization . . . 172 

Individual excellence 
tested by history, 
theory of . . 123, 124 

Individual excellence, 

necessity for . 121, 122 

Individualism and so- 



cialism, the true 
test of 144 

Influence of moral in- 
struction upon na- 
tional unity , 38, 39, 
40 

Influence, permanence 

of 318, 319 

Institutions of our 
country a ground 
for patriotism . 54 

Institutions arise from 
an individual, all 
great 125 

Institutions, the aim 

of our 120 

Institutions, the true 

test of 121 

Iowa Band, the story 

of the . 85, 305, 306 

Isaiah 194 

Jackson, Stone- 
wall 48 

Jefferson, Thomas . . 71 
Jews in Spain, the . 315 
316 
John, the Apostle . . 283 
John, the Baptist . . 194 
Johnson, Samuel . . 50 
Jones, Sir William . 106 
Justification of our 
educational sys- 
tem 105 

Keats 314 

Kenilworth .... 26 

Kepler 308 

Kiplingj Rudyard . 110 

Kossuth 81 

Labour, the glory 

of 234, 235. 

328 



Index 



Laud, Archbishop . 199 
210 
Law of iufluence, jus- 
tice of tlie . . . 303 
Law of the sower a 
moral and spirit- 
ual law, the . . 314 
Law of work and in- 
fluence illustrated 
by the disciples . 301 
302 
Lengthening of child- 
hood and infancy, 
the .... 107, 108 
Leon, Ponce de . . . 244 
Lincoln, Abraham . 44, 56 
58, 66, 116, 139, 141 
160, 255, 262, 305 
Living, itself a fine 

art 26 

Livingstone .... 95 
Lord's Prayer, the 
universality o f 

the 269 

what sincere prayer 
is ....... 282 

the germ of polit- 
ical and social rev- 
olution .... 283 

fatherhood the final 
idea and revela- 
tion in conception 

of God 284 

rewriting of all the- 
ology 285 

what God's King- 
dom is 286 

effect on Russia if 
God's Kingdom 
should come . . 287 
288, 289 
tnan's need of daily 

bread 290 

Lord's Prayer would 



bring a new in- 
dustrial order . . 291 
what would happen 
if it were an- 
swered indus- 
trially . . . 297, 298 
Lovejoy, Owen ... 84 
Lowell, James Rus- 
sell 63, 188 

His "Sir Launfal," 189 

190, 191, 193 

Luther, Martin . . 81, 83 

254, 292 



Macaulay . - . 104, 255 
Magna Charta . . . 288 

Mahomet 269 

Mallock .... 135, 165 

Man who has come to 
terms with God, 
the ...... 292 

Maudsley, Henry . . 165 

Marlow 18 

Marx, Karl . . .145, 221 
Materialism the peril 

of the hour ... 97 

Mazzini 81, 257 

McCormick reaper, 

the 313 

Medici, Pietro di . . 318 
Memory of our dead 

heroes, the ... 66 
"Men of Achieve- 
ment " and their 
careers, the . . . 158 
Men who control New 
York, origin of 

the 88, 89 

Men who make a na- 
tion rich, the . . 182 
Milton . . 192, 193, 194 
254, 261, 262 
Misunderstanding the 



329 



Index 



message of proph- from our schools 

et and poet . . . 186 and colleges . . 105 

Moral illiteracy, the Organization, results 

prevalence of . . 183 of 196. 197 

184, 185 Organization in the 

Moses . . 74, 83, 85, 147 churches .... 198 

his philosophy of na- Our age the age of hap- 

tion building . . 148 piness and good 

253 fortune .... 151 

Movement westward, Our era of national 

the 75, 76 need 190 

Moral teacher, iuflu- Our Home Missionary 

ence of the ... 82 heroes 96 

More, Sir Thomas . . 221 Our hope in the abil- 

258 ity of poor boys . 169 
Miiller 267, 268 Our need of new peo- 
ples 60 

National greatness Our new territory and 

and happiness, new peoples . . 79 

the true secret Our Western mission- 

of . . . 145, 146, 147 aries 91 

Nation's debt to its 

teachers, the . . 118 Palissy 113 

National prosperity, Parliament of relig- 

the basis of. . . 98 ions, World's . . 268 

Nation's intelligence. Path of risk the path 

the need to doub- of glory, the . . 296 

lethe Ill Paul . . . 126, 128, 253 

Nature always on the Peabody .... 173, 174 

track of the trans- Penelope 309 

gressor .... 293 Penry, John .... 245 

Nestor 309 " People of the Abyss " 188 

New life, source of Personal worth, the 

the 271 measure of . 316, 317 

Newton, Isaac . 125, 160 Personality and influ- 

261, 307, 308 ence, handing for- 

Next step of engineer- ward 299 

ing, the ... . 168 Petrarch 310 

Novalis 102 Philip 2d 246 

Phillips, Wendell .35, 84 

One important thing 252, 254 

to consecrate one's Pilgrim Fathers, story 

gifts to God, the . 281 of the . . . 244, 245 

Optimism learned 246, 247 

33<^ 



Index 



their early days in Puritan his power 

New England . . 248 and influence . . 25 

Plato . . 19, 221, 230, 258 

Pliny 117 Ealkigh, Sir Wal- 

Political campaigns ter 19 

and discussion of Raphael 319 

public questions, Reaper, invention of 

influence of, 22, 23, 24 the 164 

Post, the Moravian Recognition of our 

Missionary, the heroes 307 

story of Christian Reform, also a min- 

Frederic . . .92, 93 ister of unity . . 28 

Preacher and the pas- Regenerative power of 

toral worker, the . 206 our institutions 56, 57 

Prometheus . . .30, 31 Relations between 

Property a means for education and 

developing s o- wealth, the . . . 108 

ciety and educat- Religion begins with 

ing mankind . . 169 prayer . ... 267 

Prophecy fast becom- Religion world wide 

ing history . . . 275 that is not deeply 

• ' Protector of the Peo- altruistic, no . . 273 

pie" and result Republic, soul fruits 

of his course, the . 237 of the 56 

Ptolemy, .... 307, 308 Republic, the testing 

Puritanism, the spirit of the ..... 70 

of 253, 254 Resources of one's 

Puritan Parliament, country the be- 
scene in the . . 259 ginning of patriot- 
Puritans, faults and ism, pride in the 52, 53 
excellences of the 251 Result of sentiment of 

Puritan spirit, dis- social obligation . 217 

semination of the 242 218 

243 Results the test of any 

Puritan the founda- era . ... 196 

tion of our social Rich of to-day the 

happiness and poor of yesterday, 

peace, the . . . 251 the 158 

Pym 260 Rigault .... 130, 131 

Righteousness, the em- 

QUALITIES that will phasis of civic . 258 

make the ideal Riis, Jacob 58 

man 252 Rivalry, results of di- 

Qualities that lent the vision and denom- 

33^ 



Index 



inational . . 200, 201 Supreme claim of the 

202 public schools, the 116 

Robinson, John 67, 83 Symonds 309 

209, 246, 254, 262 
Eogers, Thorold . . 164 

Romulus 75 Talus 256 

Ruin of nations, "Ten Talent Man," 

causes of . . . 62, 63 course of another 237 

Ruskin . 171, 173, 191, 206 238 
"Ten Talent Man" 
who followed 

Savonarola . . 81, 254 Christ's ideal for 

Secret of the higher the people, the . 238 

education the se- 239, 240 

cret of national Temptation for others 

progress, the . . 106 as well as our- 

Schools and colleges, selves, avoiding . 296 

influence of • • 31, 32 297 

33, 34, 35 Testimony from va- 

Self -sacrifice, the new rious socialistic 

heart of .... 271 schemes 224, 225, 226 

Seneca 231, 270 Theories, the true test 

Sewell's diary. Judge 250 for all 142 

Shaftesbury . . 173, 174 Theories, two widely 

Shakespeare . 18, 125, 244 separated, the 

261, 314 golden mean . . 129 

Signs of peril in a na- Things that perfect a 

tion 178 nation and a man, 

Smeaton ...... 165 the 194 

Social problem, uni- Third great epoch for 

versal interest in the republic, that 

the 216 of expansion, the 73 

Society's interests one 162 Thoreau 98 

Socrates ... 75, 253, 270 Thoughtful man the 

Solomon 180 profoundly relig- 

Spencer, Herbert . . 106 ious man, the . 291 

107, 225, 226 Three generations 

Stanley, H. M. . 138, 276 needed to produce 

Steam engine, and its a great man . . 161 

story, the ... 165 Time necessary be- 

Stephenson , . . 71, 160 tween seed-time 

Sumner, Charles . . 255 and harvest . . 300 

Summer schools and Tolstoi 55 

night classes . . 37 Torquemada .... 315 



Index 



Total depravity a uni- 
versal fact . . . 270 

Toyubee, Arnold . 28, 29 

'' The Tramp of Com- 
ing Millious " . 73 

Treasure and inherit- 
ance, our great- 
est .... 261, 262 

Turner, J. M. W. . . 160 

Ulysses ...... 309 

Unifying power of the 

press ... 17, 18, 19 
Unity, in what the 

true consists . . 213 
Unity in the churches 41 
Unity of language . 15 
Universal element, 

new light on the . 266 

Vane 260 

Voltaire 155 

Wallace, Alfeed 

Russell .... 184 
Washington ... 58, 71 
139, 141 
Waste of ignorance, 

the 109 

Waste in the pulpit . 202 
Watt ... 125 165, 261 
Ways of securing 

equality, two . . 142 



Wealth, four factors 

in producing . . 164 
Wealth, selhshness of 279 
Wealth in New York 
City, some foun- 
dations of . . . 167 
Wealth that is pov- 
erty, the ... . 182 
Wealthy leisure class, 

the 173 

Webster . 48, 76, 84, 160 
242, 262 
Weismann . . . 106, 107 
Wesley, John . . 39, 199 
210, 212 
What knowledge 

does .... 102, 103 
Whitman, Marcus . . 85 

Whitney 313 

Whittier .... 98, 127 
159, 188 
William the Silent . 246 
Williams, Roger . . 210 
Wisdom measures 

man's progress . 113 
Wordsworth . .116, 194 
Work alone gives con- 
tentment and 
happiness . . 170, 171 
World a resting place, 

our 295 

Xenophon . . .191, 244 



333 



C 310 88 



THE FORTUNE OF 
THE REPUBLIC <S 




